GIFT  OF 

SEELEY  W.  MUDD 

and 

GEORGE  I.  COCHRAN     MEYER  ELSASSER 

DR.JOHN  R.  HAYNES    WILLIAM  L.  HONNOLD 

JAMES  R.  MARTIN         MRS.  JOSEPH  F.  SARTORI 

to  the 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

SOUTHERN  BRANCH 


JOHN  FISKE 


,.. 


This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below 


BR50 

S26s     lavage- 


Southern  Branch 
of  the 

University  of  California 

Los  Angeles 

3  263 


Form  L   I 


*'Show  us  the  Father" 


BT 


MiNOT   J.    Savage,  Samuel  R.  Calthrop, 

Henry  M.   Simmons,  John  W.  Chadwick, 

William  C.  Gannett,  Jenkin  Lloyd  Jones 


'?  ""  ?'    '      ''    *'!   ^     ^  ^'  %'    ^\  ^' 


CHICAGO 

CHARLES  H.  KBBR  &  COMPANY 

175  Dkarbobn  Stbbet 

1888 


3528 


Q  Q  e;  O 


Copyright,  1888, 
By  Chakles  H,  Kbrk  <fc  Co. 


'3"R  ^  o 

COJSTTEIS'TS 


1.  I' AGE 

The   Change  of  Front   of  the   Universe 

Ml NOT  J.  Savage  1 

JVVm'  York  and  Hudson  River  Unitarian  Conferenct, 
Brooklyn,  1882. 

II. 

The  Fullness  of  God      -       Samuel  R.  Calthrop         33 

National    Unitarian  Conference,  Saratoga,  1886. 

III. 
t         The  Unity  of  God       -      -       Henry  M.  Simmons  57 

p.^  Western  Unitarian  Conference,  Chicago,  1887. 


IV. 
^  The  Revelation  of  God     -     John  W.  Chadwick 

.j^-  Unitarian  Ministers''  Conference,  London,  1887. 


V. 

The  Faith  of  Ethics      -      William  C.  Gannett  103 

Illinois   Unitarian  Conference,  Geneva,  1885. 

VI. 
Religion  from  the  Near  End 

Jenkin  Lloyd  Jones  129 

Berry  Street  Conference,  Boston,  1887. 


THE  CHANGE  OF  FRONT  OF  THE 
UNIVERSE. 

MINOT    JUDSON    SAVAGE. 

When  the  gods  visit  the  earth  they  are  rarely 
recognized  until  the  time  of,  or  after,  their  de- 
parture. So  the  tale  runs  in  all  stories  of  celestial 
advent.  And  what  is  true  of  great  personages  is 
also  true  of  great  events.  One  of  the  most  strik- 
ing things  that  history  has  to  tell  us  is  the  uncon- 
sciousness of  what  is  really  taking  place  on  the 
part  of  those  who  are  even  prominent  actors  in 
what  afterwards  proved  themselves  to  have  been 
the  great  turning  points  of  time. 

When  the  crisis  of  our  late  war  was  upon  us, 
even  our  leaders  talked  of  a  breeze  that  would 
blow  over  in  "  ninety  days."  They  little  knew  that 
humanity  was  gathering  its  resistless  might  to  take 
one  more  bloody  step  in  the  upward  march  of 
civilization.  When  Luther  nailed  his  theses  on  the 
church  door  at  Wittenburg,  Europe  saw  only  one 
disaffected  monk,  and  little  thought  that  it  was 
really  the  modern  world  rousing  itself  to  shake 
off  the  dogma-di-ugged  sleep  of  the  Middle  Ages. 
When  Copernicus  died  after  one  look  at  his 
speedily-forgotten  volume,  who  thought  that  the 
old  heavens  were  being  *'  folded  away  like  a  scroll," 
that  a  "  new  earth  "  was  being  given  to  men,  and 


2  The  Change  of  Front 

that  the  '*  former  things  had  passed  away?"  And 
when  the  Pharisees  at  last  got  rid  of  the  trouble- 
some meddler  fi*om  Nazareth,  and  lay  down  to  their 
triumphant  sleep,  who  dreamed  that  they  had 
pulled  down  their  own  temple  about  their  ears  and 
turned  the  disgrace  of  the  cross  into  the  symbol  of 
a  world-conquering  religion  ?  So  ever  does  history 
move  on.  When  the  event  is  passed,  then  the 
world  wakes  up  and  notes  its  vast  significance. 
Milton  tells  us  that  when  the  gates  of  hell  were 
opened  for  the  issue  of  Lucifer  on  his  voyage  of 
discovery  in  search  of  the  new-created  earth — 

"  On  a  sudden  open  fly 
With  impetuous  recoil  and  jarring  sound, 
Th'  infernal  doors,  and  on  their  hinges  grate 
Harsh  thunder." 

But  not  so  open  the  gates  of  destiny.  Their 
hinges  are  as  noiseless  as  the  axle  of  a  star.  They 
move  as  silently  as  the  earth  turns  while  we  sleep; 
and  the  race  wakes  up  to  find  that  it  is  facing  a  new 
morning. 

Victor  Hugo  says  of  Waterloo,  "  It  was  not  a 
battle;  it  was  a  change  of  front  on  the  part  of  the 
universe."'  What  he  uses,"  with  his  grand  poetic 
license,  in  picturing  a  political  revolution,  we  may 
use  in  all  literalness  to  set  forth  what  is  going  on 
before  our  very  eyes,  and  of  which  we,  willing  or 
unwilling,  are  a  part.  To-day  the  universe  is 
changing  front.  But  the  great  mass  of  the  people 
seems  utterly  unconscious  of  it.  Like  the  pas- 
sengers on  a  great  ship  at  sea,   sleeping  in  their 


of  the  Universe.  3 

berths,  lounging  in  the  cabin,  chatting  on  the  deck, 
they  take  little  account  of  the  relation  which  the 
ship  itself  holds  to  the  great  world,  and  do  not 
feel  the  motion  when  she  swings  round  and  sweepn 
off  on  another  coiu'se.  But  when  they  do  arouse 
at  last,  they  find  that  the  old  headlands  have  dis- 
appeared, and  that  new  constellations  are  shining 
out  of  unfamiliar  skies. 

We  talk  much  indeed  of  the  religious  transition 
of  the  age.  Pulpits,  platforms,  newspapers  and 
magazines  touch  upon  it  among  the  topics  of  the 
time,  and  so  far  as  the  words  are  concerned  are  in 
danger  of  wearing  them  trite.  And  yet,  it  seems 
to  me,  that  few  note  the  real  significance  of  "  the 
signs  of  the  times,"  or  the  revolutionary  and  far- 
reaching  results  that  are  destined  to  follow  the 
movements  now  going  on.  The  Jews  were  accus- 
tomed to  divide  all  time  into  two  great  epochs,  the 
one  preceding  and  the  one  following  the  messianic 
advent,  that  stood  with  them  as  the  tiirning  point 
of  all  the  ages.  But  with  more  truth,  and  in  all 
literalness,  we  may  regard  the  present  age  as  the 
pivot  point  on  which  the  whole  of  human  history 
turns.  There  has  been  a  certain  homogeneity  and 
consistency  in  all  the  past  of  the  world.  But  that 
is  gone  now ;  and  the  Eternal  utters  his  voice,  say- 
ing: "Behold,  I  make  all  things  new;  the  first 
heaven  and  the  first  earth  are  passed  away."  The 
universe  has  changed  front ;  and  the  second,  and 
— however  long — the  final  great  age  of  all  time 
stretches  out  before  us.     I  am  aware  that  this  is 


4  The  Change  of  Front 

saying  a  great  deal  ;  and  for  that  very  reason,  I 
now  ask  your  attention  while  I  go  on  to  justify  my 
statement. 

But  before  I  do  this  I  must  stop  long  enough  to 
indicate  to  you  in  a  word  what  I  am  doing  it  for. 
That  is,  I  wish  you  to  keep  in  mind  all  along  the 
bearing  which  this  discussion  has  on  the  great  re- 
ligious and  moral  problems  of  the  age.  The  one 
Universal  and  fundamental  fact,  then,  to  be  remem- 
bered is  this:  that  every  religion,  the  wide  world 
over,  ivhen  analyzed,  is  found  to  run  hack  to,  root 
itself  in,  and  spring  out  of,  some  theoretical  con- 
ception of  the  universe. 

It  starts  with  a  scheme  of  things,  including  a 
theory  of  God,  of  man,  of  their  actual  relations,  of 
certain  better  ideal  relations  which  ought  to  exist, 
and  a  plan  for  turning  the  poor  actual  into  the 
better  ideal.  Every  religion,  then,  however  crude 
or  however  refined,  starts  with  its  supposed  science 
of  the  universe.  Each  has  its  cosmology :  and  in 
this  cosmology  it  finds  its  raisoyi  d'etre.  If  then 
the  time  ever  comes  when  this  fundamental  scheme 
of  things  is  discredited,  when  its  theory  of  God 
and  man  is  disproved,  then  the  religion  itself  is 
dead  in  its  very  tap-root.  It  may  put  forth  leaf 
and  blossom  again  for  many  seasons,  but  its  doom 
is  plain.  Its  followers  henceforth  must  be  those 
whose  allegiance  is  a  thing  of  tradition  and  habit, 
and  not  the  intelligent  conviction  of  informed  and 
earnest  men. 

Bearing  in  mind,   then,   this  one  universal  and 


of  the  Universe.  5 

fundamental  fact,  we  are  now  ready  to  go  on  and 
consider  the  modem  change  of  front  of  the 
universe. 

The  human  race  has  occupied  this  planet  at  least 
two  hundred  thousand  years.  Do  you  reaHze  that 
that  means  two  thousands  of  centuries — during 
which  time  our  forefathers  have  been  slowly  climb- 
ing up  to  our  present  vantage  of  outlook  ?  Leav- 
ing one  side  certain  glimpses  and  foregleams  of 
light,  so  as  to  keep  the  outlines  of  our  thought 
clear — we  may  say  that  our  modern  day  dawned 
about  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  century.  In 
contrast,  then,  with  the  two  thousands  of  hundreds 
of  years  that  preceded  them,  the  last  four  hundred 
are  reduced  to  hardly  more  than  a  point  of  time. 
And  this  point  is  the  pivot  on  which  our  universe 
has  turned.  Until  now,  with  whatever  minor  va- 
riations, one  general  type  of  conception  of  the  uni- 
verse has  prevailed,  in  all  nations  and  in  all  reli- 
gions. Henceforth  that  type  of  conception  can  no 
longer  be  intelligently  held.  A  certain  general 
type  of  religion  sprang  out  of,  and  ivas  held  along 
with,  the  old  conception  of  the  universe.  Hence- 
forth that  type  of  religion  passes  away  with  the 
world  to  which  it  belonged. 

I  must  now  outline  these  parallel  and  companion 
types  of  the  universe  and  of  religion,  that  it  may 
appear  how  naturally  they  go  together.  We  shall 
then  be  ready  also  to  see  the  nature  and  the  neces- 
sity of  the  present  and  future  change  of  front. 
This  outline  must  be  drawn,  if  possible,  with  a  few 


6  The  Change  of  Front 

bold  and  clear  strokes,  confused  with   no  more  of 
detail  than  is  absolutely  necessary. 

1.  In  the  old  scheme  of  the  universe  the  earth 
was  the  central  and  the  largest  body  in  it,  for 
whose  convenience  alone  all  the  others  moved  and 
shone.  Its  material  was  "  dead  matter,"  out  of 
which  God  built  it,  as  a  carpenter  builds  a  house. 

2.  God  was  an  individualized,  outlined,  limited 
being,  who  had  planned  and  made  the  universe,  and 
who  ruled  it  from  without  as  a  despot  governs  a 
kingdom.  "* 

3.  Man  was  a  creatui-e  standing  alone,  separate 
from  and  above  all  other  creatures,  especially 
created  by  an  act  of  the  divine  will. 

4.  Keligious  and  moral  laws  were  only  statutory 
enactments  of  deity — not  inhering  in  the  nature  of 
things,  and  known  only  as  they  were  revealed  super- 
naturally  through  prophet,  or  priest,  or  book. 

5.  Religion,  then,  was  a  government,    in   the 
ordinary  sense  of  that  word.     The  universe  was  a 
kingdom;    God  was    absolute  monarch;    man  was 
his  subject;  hell  was  the  prison  for  all  incorrigible 
offenders;    heaven  was  the  court  where  favorites 
were  received   and  honored.      For  one  reason  or 
another,  nearly  all  men,  first  or  last,   fell  under 
condemnation  through    disobedience;    and  hence 
the  necessity  for  a  Commission  of  Pardons  in  per- 
manent session.     This  took  one  form  or  another, 
priesthood  or  church,  according  to  circumstances. 
But  in   all   cases   it  was   the   repository  and  ex- 


of  the  Universe.  7 

pounder  of  the  divine  will,  and  held  in  its  hands  the 
conditions  of  deliverance. 

This,  then,  in  general  outline  is  the  scheme,  some 
fragment  or  variety  of  which  has  dominated  human 
thought  and  human  life  for  two  thousands  of 
centuries.  All  this  is  perfectly  natural  and  not  to 
be  wondered  at.  Indeed,  it  is  impossible  that  it 
should  have  been  otherwise;  for  the  materials  of 
knowledge  out  of  which  to  construct  any  better 
theory  have  not  been  in  man's  possession  until  the 
present  time.  I  have  no  sort  of  sympathy,  then, 
with  him  who  merely  ridicules  the  past  ;  as  well 
ridicule  the  Swiss  Lake-dwellers  for  their  style  of 
architecture.  Theologically,  as  well  as  socially, 
they  built  as  well  as  they  knew.  Let  us,  then,  see 
to  it  that  we  do  the  same.  The  only  justifiable 
victims  for  our  sarcasm  are  those — too  many,  it 
must  be  confessed — who  know,  but  do  not. 

But  before  leaving  this  point,  let  us  group  the 
separate  conceptions  of  the  old  universe  into  one 
concrete  picture,  that  we  may  look  at  it  as  a  whole, 
and  thus  make  clear  the  contrast  between  it  and 
the  new.  As  one  definite  variety  of  the  type,  let 
us  take  the  Jewish.  They  conceived  the  universe 
as  figured  like  an  oblong  square,  after  which,  as 
tradition  asserted,  the  tabernacle  was  patterned. 
In  their  later  thought,  it  became  a  sort  of  three - 
story  stnicture.  Sheol,  the  home  of  the  dead, 
containing  both  paradise  and  gehenna,  was  the 
basement.  The  upper  story  was  heaven,  the  home 
of  God,  of  his  angelic  court,  and  of  certain  earthly 


8  The  Change  of  Front 

favorites  translated.  Between  the  two  was  earth, 
the  home  of  man.  The  sky  was  a  solid  concave, 
the  floor  of  heaven  and  the  dome  of  earth.  The 
Christian  conception,  modified  in  details,  was  in 
essence  the  same.  In  the  great  poem  of  Dante, 
we  find  the  universe  of  the  Middle  Ages  crystal- 
lized into  a  figure  as  clear-cut  as  the  outlines  of 
an  intaglio.  Hell  is  here  a  great  cavern  reaching 
to  the  center  of  the  earth  ;  purgatory  a  hill  on  the 
opposite  side;  and  paradise  was  placed  above  nine 
concentric  planetary  spheres  ;  and  the  abode  of 
man  is  one  side  of  the  surface  of  the  earth.  That 
was  five  hundred  years  ago.  Let  us  come  down, 
then,  to  within  about  two  hundred  years,  and  note 
the  picture  which  Milton  has  drawn  in  "  Para- 
dise Lost."  Milton  was  acquainted  with  what  he 
doubtless  regarded  as  the  speculations  of  Coper- 
nicus ;  for  he  makes  Adam  and  the  angel  discuss 
the  problems  involved.  But  he  dismisses  the  sub- 
ject as  one  of  those  questionable  attempts  of  the 
finite  mind  to  penetrate  divine  secrets,  which 
theology  has  always  looked  upon  with  little  favor. 
If  now  you  wish  a  picture  of  Milton's  universe, 
draw  a  mental  circle.  Cut  this  circle  horizontally 
in  two  by  a  line  like  an  equator  drawn  across  a 
map  of  a  hemisphere.  The  upper  half  of  this 
circle  is  heaven.  Then  di-aw  a  curved  line,  like  the 
Antarctic  circle  near  the  bottom.  Beneath  that 
line  is  hell.  Now  di-aw  another  circle,  whose  upper 
curve  shall  almost  touch  the  floor  of  heaven,  and 
whose  lower  edge  shall  reach  half-way  from  heaven's 


of  the  Universe.  9 

floor  to  the  dome  of  hell.  Within  this  circle  are 
the  concentric  spheres  of  the  Ptolemaic  universe, 
with  the  earth  at  the  center.  The  whole  universe, 
as  thus  conceived  in  the  great  Protestant  epic,  was 
not  so  large  as  the  now  known  orbit  of  the  moon. 
For,  when  the  rebel  angels  are  thrust  out  of  heaven, 
it  takes  them  only  nine  days  to  fall  clear  to  the 
bottom  of  everything.  To  get  a  vivid  mental  con- 
trast as  to  comparative  cosmic  distances,  just  re- 
member that  it  takes  the  lightning-like  velocity  of 
light,  not  nine  days,  but  three  years  and  a  half,  to 
reach  us  from  the  nearest  of  the  fixed  stars  ;  and 
that,  when  we  have  reached  that,  we  are  but  stand- 
ing on  the  outer  threshold  of  infinity. 

In  Ptolemy's  conception  of  the  universe — of 
which  Milton's  is  a  graphic  and  definite  picture — 
the  earth  is  at  rest  at  the  center.  The  moon,  the 
sun,  each  planet,  and  then  all  the  fixed  stars  in  one 
plane,  are  attached  to  separate,  concentric,  crystal 
and  so  transparent  spheres,  like  so  many  glass 
globes  inside  each  other.  These  spheres  hold  the 
heavenly  luminaries  in  their  places,  and  carry  them 
around  with  them  as  they  revolve.  Until  Newton, 
the  world  could  imagine  no  other  way  to  keep 
them  in  their  orbits.  For  even  Kepler,  after  he 
had  discovered  the  laws  of  planetary  motion, 
and  knew  that  they  no  longer  moved  in  circles, 
could  not  imagine  how  they  were  held  in  theii 
places,  except  on  the  supposition  that  an  angel  was 
appointed  to  superintend  and  guide  each  one. 

These  really  magnificent  attempts  to  solve  the 


10  The  Change  of  Front 

riddle  of  the  universe  were  indeed  very  far  ad- 
vanced  beyond  the  cruder  thoughts  that  preceded 
them,  the  vague  fancies  and  dreams  of  semi- 
civilized  and  barbaric  peoples.  But — and  this  is 
the  great  point  to  be  kept  in  mind — however  crude 
or  however  complex  and  highly  developed,  they 
are  all  only  varieties  of  one  grand  type.  They  all 
treat  the  ivorld  as  a  structure  urought  upon  and 
made  by  a  God  or  Gods  outside  of  it.  They  all 
hold  the  earth  as  central  in  the  universe ;  and  man 
as  a  special  creation.  They  all  make  religion  and 
moi^ality  to  consist  in  the  externally  imposed  will 
of  a  God,  supernaturally  revealed,  and  hedged 
about  by  arbitrary  penalties  ofreivard  and  punish- 
ment. As  far  as  the  fetich-worshiper's  thought 
had  gone,  it  had  gone  in  this  direction.  And  the 
grandest  development  of  organized  Christianity 
has  not  transcended  these  ideas.  This,  then,  is 
what  I  mean  when  I  say  that  the  whole  past  of 
humanity  has  occupied  itself  with  some  special 
type  of  this  general  conception  of  the  universe  and 
of  religion. 

But  now,  at  last,  comes  a  change.  Those  who 
imagine  that  it  is  only  superficial,  like  a  hundred 
other  eddies  or  temporary  turnings  of  the  tide  in 
human  thought,  can  have  made  but  a  superficial 
study  of  the  forces  at  work,  and  of  the  direction  in 
which  they  tend.  Those  who  smile  at  the  preten- 
sions of  the  age,  and  wonder  why,  if  there  is  any- 
thing in  it,  the  great  revelation  has  not  come  be- 
fore, again  can  have  made  but  a  superficial  study 


of  the  Universe.  11 

of  the  lines  of  human  progress  and  the  events  of 
the  modern  world.  Events  occur  when  the  world 
is  ripe  for  them,  and  not  before.  As  well  wonder 
why  the  century  plant  does  not  burst  into  blossom 
before  its  hour  has  come.  Thi^ee  great  things  have 
happened  in  the  modern  world.  They  could  not 
have  happened  before,  because  the  world  had  not 
attained  the  knowledge  out  of  which  they  have 
sprung.  Gunpowder  must  batter  do'jvn  the  bar- 
riers of  the  Middle  Ages;  movable  type  must  give 
wings  to  thought;  commerce  and  navigation  must 
turn  the  oceans  into  highways  and  open  all  lands; 
invention  must  have  free  play  to  create  instruments 
of  investigation;  then,  for  the  first  time  in  history, 
could  man  even  gather  the  materials  from  which 
he  might  hope  to  construct  even  an  approximately 
correct  theory  of  the  universe.  The  conditions  for 
a  hopeful  attempt,  then,  have  existed  only  in  the 
modern  world. 

But  in  this  modern  world,  as  I  said  a  moment 
ago,  three  great  things  have  happened.  And  these 
three  things  are  three  revolutions — a  revolution 
in  physics,  a  revolution  in  criticism,  and  a  revolu- 
tion in  biology.  And  fi'om  before  their  faces 
"the  'old'  earth  and  the 'old'  heaven  have  fled 
away,  and  there  is  found  no  place  for  them."  And 
now  we  see  "  a  new  heaven  and  a  new  earth." 

Let  me  now  indicate,  briefly  as  I  may,  what 
those  three  revolutions  are.     And — 

1.     The  revolution  in  Physics. 

So  far  as  we  need  take  account  of  this  for  our 


12  The  Change  of  Front 

present  purpose,  it  began  with  Copernicus,  near 
the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  century.  Some  hope- 
ful beginnings  had  been  made  in  ancient  Greece. 
But  the  great  brain  of  Plato  turned  the  thought  of 
the  world  away  from  physical  investigation  and 
into  ideal  channels.  Then  came  Christianity,  and 
consecrated  the  old,  crude  science  of  the  Jews  as  a 
part  of  its  infallible  revelation  of  divine  truth.  It 
condemned  matter  as  essentially  evil,  and  made 
scientific  study  a  sin.  All  progress  in  this  direc- 
tion was  stopped  for  fifteeen  hundi'ed  years.  Physi- 
cal discoveiy  then,  was  asleep  for  a  millennium  and 
a  half.  The  Renaissance  began  where  ancient 
Greece  left  off.  Not  that  the  human  mind  was 
inactive;  but  all  its  genius  and  power  were  engaged 
in  elaborating  and  speculating  within  the  sacred 
limits  of  ecclesiastical  dogma.  And  since  the  great 
secrets  of  the  world  and  of  man  were  hidden  out- 
side those  limits,  of  course  they  were  not  dis- 
covered. 

The  revolution,  then,  practically  began  with 
Copernicus.  He  shattered  the  crystal  spheres  of 
Ptolemy.  He  set  the  stationary  earth  in  motion, 
and  sent  it  spinning  round  the  sun.  He  spread 
out  before  human  thought  the  illimitable  universe 
of  suns  and  systems;  and,  destroying  the  illusions 
of  our  conceit,  taught  us  to  take  our  true  place  as, 
no  longer  central,  but  only  a  subordinate  member 
of  the  infinite  oi'der. 

This  was  the  first  great  shock  that  was  given  to 
the  old  belief.     The  significance  of  this  shock  will 


of  the  Universe.  13 

appear  if  you  remember  that  the  theological  scheme 
of  Christendom  sprang  out  of,  was  commensurate 
with,  and  fitted,  like  a  picture  in  a  frame,  into  the 
baby-house  dimensions  of  the  Ptolemaic  cosmology. 
When  that  was  shattered,  the  theological  scheme 
had  no  longer  a  framework  or  a  support.     The 
Copernican  scheme  furnished  no  place  for  the  old 
God,  no  place  for  his  heaven,  no  place  for  his  hell. 
And  as  the  dove  of  Noah  wandered  the  wide  waste 
and  found  no  place  to  set  its  foot,  so  through  the 
infinite  reaches  of  the  Copernican  universe  has  the 
spirit    of    dogmatic   Christianity    wandered    and 
discovered  no  place  of  rest.      It  is  not  at  home 
in  it,    and   never  can   be.      The   leaders   of   the 
Protestant  reformation   scented   the   danger,  and 
would  have  suppressed  the  system  of  Copernicus 
as  atheism.     And  indeed  from  their  standpoint  it 
was  atheism.     Their   special   conception  of    God 
could  not  live  in  its  infinite  spaces  nor  breathe  its 
rarefied  air.     And  ever  since  that  day  it  has  been 
suffering  and  pining  from  asphyxia,  and  is  doomed 
to  certain  death. 

All  the  later  physical  discoveries  are  in  the  same 
line;  and  each  one,  in  its  turn,  is  fatal  to  some  one 
of  the  old  ideas.  They  are  part  of  the  one  movement, 
and  need  to  be  grouped  together  so  as  to  produce 
one  general  impression.  This  grouping  must  be 
very  brief,  and  I  gladly  avail  myself  of  the  elo- 
quent words  of  my  friend.  Prof.  1.  H.  Allen,  of  the 
Divinity  School  at  Cambridge. 

"  Think  of  the  steps  that  have  been  taken  since 


14  The  Change  of  Front 

Galileo's  discoveries  about  the  planets,  suggesting 
a  plurality  of  inhabited  worlds;  Kepler's  laws  of 
planetary  motions,  dissolving  away  the  solid 
spheres  of  the  old  astronomy;  Newton's  theory  of 
universal  gravitation,  displacing  arbitrary  will  aa 
the  direct  cause  of  the  celestial  motions ;  Franklin's 
proof  that  lightning  and  electricity  are  the  same, 
doing  away  with  the  superstitious  awe  at  thunder 
storms;  Laplace's  nebular  hypothesis,  so  gen- 
erally accepted,  carrying  back  the  origin  of 
the  solar  system  to  incalculable  remoteness;  Dal- 
fcon's  demonstration  of  definite  proportions  and 
elective  affinities  in  chemistry,  making  ridiculous 
the  old  notion  of  'dead  matter'  as  the  antithesis  of 
Spirit  or  the  enemy  of  Good;  demonstration  of 
the  speed  of  light  and  distances  of  the  stars,  de- 
stroying utterly  the  old  belief  in  a  local  heaven; 
geological  proofs  of  the  unifonuity  of  cosmic 
forces  and  antiquity  of  the  globe,  disproving  abso- 
lutely the  popular  chronology  of  creation ;  discov- 
eries of  the  spectroscope  as  to  the  atmosphere  of 
the  sun  and  the  light  of  stars,  widening  enormously 
and  at  once  the  range  of  our  physics ;  the  well-es- 
tablished doctrine  of  the  conservation  and  equiva- 
lence of  energy,  with  its  far-reaching  effect  on  our 
conception  of  the  laws  of  life;  and  now  the  scheme 
of  evolution  by  natural  process,  apparently  des- 
tined, with  whatever  modification,  to  supersede 
and  swallow  up  every  other  theory  of  the  trans- 
mission of  life  and  the  inheritance  of  natural  good 
or  evil. 

"  These  successive  steps — near  half  of  them  taken 
within  living  memory — interest  us  chiefly,  not  as 
so  many  advances  or  conquests  of  human  intellect, 
but  as  they  bear  on  conceptions  and  ideas  which 
were  once  wrrought  up  without  question  into  men's 
religious  belief,  and  were  held  necessary  to  their 


of  the  Universe.  15  ' 

salvation.  It  is  very  impressive  to  survey  those 
steps  in  their  connection  and  in  their  order  of 
sequence,  if  we  only  stop  a  moment  to  reflect  how 
prodigious  is  the  mental  revolution  they  imply.  To 
take  one  step  the  other  way,  to  roll  back  by  ever  so 
little  an  arc  the  driving-wheel  of  that  revolution,  is 
manifestly  impossible.  And  the  steps  have  been 
coming  with  increasing  frequency  and  increasing 
weight." 

2.  It  is  time  now  to  turn  to  the  second  of  the 
great  revolutions  of  the  modem  world — the  revolu- 
tion in  criticism. 

There  is  one  point  in  this  wide  field  which 
chiefly  concerns  my  present  purpose;  and,  leav- 
ing one  side  all  else,  I  shall  put  my  finger  on  that. 
A  most  important  chapter  in  the  histoiy  of  the 
world's  religious  and  moral  progress  will,  when  it 
is  written,  concern  itself  with  the  results  of  the 
commercial  enterprise  of  nations.  And  it  was  a 
commercial  exigency  that  led  to  what  I  now  wish 
you  to  notice.  Little  did  the  Christianity  of  the 
Anglican  church  dream  of  the  religious  results  of 
the  British  occupation  of  India.  But  in  reality 
that  occupation  led  to  the  discovery  of  the  Rig 
Feda,  and  the  opening  to  European  scholarship 
of  its  ancient  treasure-house.  And  not  only  did 
this  discovery  furnish  a  key  to  the  mythology  of 
Greece  and  Rome;  it  also  created  a  new  science 
— that  of  Comparative  Eeligions.  It  furnished 
proof  of  the  filiation  and  kinship  of  languages 
and  peoples,  and  opened  the  common  source 
whence  have  flowed  down   through   the  ages  the 


16  The  Change  of  Front 

parallel  streams  of  religious  traditions.  The  sci- 
ence of  criticism  lias  since  been  reconstructed. 
The  world  has  been  ransacked.  Mythical  cycles 
and  folk-lore  tales  have  rendered  up  their  secrets. 
And  now,  instead  of  one  true  and  supernatural 
religion,  in  a  class  by  itself,  and  in  another  class 
all  the  others  by  themselves  equally  labeled  false, 
the  educated  mind  of  Europe  and  America  is  be- 
coming accustomed  to  note  the  evidences  of  rela- 
tionship which  prove  that  all  the  religions  of  the 
earth  are  only  the  naturally  born  members  of  one 
great  family;  and  whether  large  or  small,  wise  or 
unwise,  equally  the  childi-en  of  the  natural  aspira- 
tion and  reverence  of  man. 

Now,  then,  criticism  equally  studies  them  all, 
and  in  the  use  of  the  comparative  method  assigns 
each  its  rank  and  place.  It  no  longer  admits  that 
either  of  them  sprang,  like  Minerva,  full  grown, 
fi'om  the  forehead  of  a  god  ;  but  traces  the  natural 
lines  of  its  growth,  and  seeks  after  its  natural 
origin. 

This  critical  revolution  is  no  less  disastrous  to 
monarchy  in  religion  than  was  the  French  Revolu- 
tion to  monarchy  in  politics.  It  brings  the  "rights 
of  man"  to  the  front;  it  destroys  "divine  right" 
in  religion,  and  makes  the  test  of  the  right  of  any 
religion  to  live  and  rule  to  depend  upon  the  ser- 
vice it  can  render  to  the  welfare  of  humanity.  Not 
power  any  longer,  nor  claims  as  to  exceptional 
origin,  are  sufficient  to  establish  its  dynasty;  it 
can  reign  only  as  it  can  serve. 


of  the  Universe.  17 

It  is  apparent,  to  even  superficial  thought,  that 
this  change  alone  means  nothing  less  than  a  new 
religious  civilization. 

3.  But  there  is  one  revolution  more — that  in 
biology,  the  foremost  figure  in  which  is  the  modest 
student  of  Down — Charles  Darwin.  In  the  short 
space  of  twenty-three  years  he  has  completely  rev- 
olutionized our  total  conception  of  man.  Adam 
and  Eden  now  dwell  in  the  cloud-land  of  fable. 
We  are  seeking  man's  cradle  in  the  dim,  primeval 
twilight  that  hovers  over  the  jungle,  where  our 
brute-like  progenitor  first  stood  upon  his  feet, 
began  to  use  his  new-found  hands,  exchanged  his 
wordless  cry  for  a  voice,  and  began  to  look  out  over 
the  world  and  up  toward  heaven  with  the  dawning 
human  intelligence  in  his  eyes. 

These,  then,  are  the  three  revolutions  of  the 
modern  world.  This  new  universe,  in  its  religious 
and  ethical  significance,  as  well  as  in  the  magnifi- 
cent sweep  and  tendency  of  its  physical  processes, 
is  grandly  outlined  for  us  by  the  master  hand  of 
Herbert  Spencer.  Indeed,  he  is  the  father  of  that 
scheme  of  evolution  which  seems  destined  to  be 
the  guiding  principle  of  the  coming  civilization. 
Such  familiarity  with  all  knowledge,  such  attention 
to  details,  so  firm  a  hold  on  underlying  and  uni- 
versal principles,  such  com^^rehensive  grasp  of  all- 
embracing  laws,  such  power  to  group  them  all  in 
one  orderly  system,  perhaps  the  world  has  never 
seen  before. 

I  must  now  ask  you  to  look  with  me  at  their 


18  The  Change  of  Front 

logical  and  necessary  results  in  the  department  of 
theology.  I  regard  them  as  much  more  radical  in 
some  directions,  and  much  less  so  in  some  others, 
than  they  seem  to  be  considered  in  the  popular 
mind. 

I  wish  to  hold  myself  here — as  all  the  way  through 
— to  a  direct  dealing  with  the  few  great  essentials. 
It  will  be  understood,  of  course,  that  these  carry  in 
their  sweep  all  the  minor  details.  We  need  then 
to  note  which  way  the  modern  world  is  facing  in 
its  outlook  on  the  two  great  problems  of  man  and 
God.  The  change  of  front  here  is  complete  and 
irreversible.  Let  us  review  its  bearings  on  human 
nature  and  human  destiny. 

1.  Modern  theology  first  took  serious  alarm 
when  the  young  science  of  geology  demonstrated 
the  antiquity  of  the  earth.  By  a  resistless  logic, 
each  step  of  which  was  incontrovertible  fact,  the 
Bible  chronology  was  stretched  until  it  broke  into 
a  thousand  fragments,  and  the  six  thousand  years 
became  uncounted  ages.  It  was  seen,  f  or.example, 
that  Niagara  Falls  had  takea  at  least  two  hundred 
thousand  years  to  slowly  wear  its  way  through  its 
two  miles  of  solid  rock  up  to  its  present  point  of 
thunderous  descent.  And  it  was  found  that  the  old 
earth,  instead  of  being  made  and  finished  once  for 
all,  is  always  being  made  and  never  finished. 

Of  course  the  attempt  has  been  made — it  always 
is  in  such  cases — to  reconcile  the  irreconcilable. 
The  day,  with  morning  and  evening,  became  mar- 
velously   elastic    and    stretched   over   uncounted 


of  the  Universe.  19 

periods  of  time.  It  was  suddenly  discovered  that 
Moses  had  known  all  the  while  what  the  scientist 
had  just  found  out.  And  the  world  was  expected 
to  admire  a  revelation  which  did  not  reveal  any- 
thing until  after  it  had  been  discovered  in  some 
other  way. 

But  this  has  broken  down  at  last ;  and  now  we 
are  told  that  the  Bible  did  not  undertake  to  reveal 
scientific  truth,  and  that  it  is  infallible  only  in 
those  cases  where  it  can  not  possibly  be  put  to  any 
decisive  test. 

2.  Next  geology,  in  its  youthful  vigor,  became 
the  parent  of  another  science  called  archaeology. 
And  between  the  two  it  was  soon  made  clear  that 
not  only  was  the  earth  older  than  had  been  sup- 
posed, but  that  man  was  no  parvenu  on  the  planet. 
And  when  to  the  hoary  antiquity  of  his  origin  was 
added  Darwin's  story  of  his  birth,  the  very  founda- 
tion stone  of  the  popular  theology  was  ground  to 
powder.  The  very  raison  d'etre  of  the  Church's 
"  plan  of  salvation,"  the  only  excuse  for  its  exist- 
ence, is  the  supposed  "fall  of  man."  But  what 
now  do  we  see?  No  longer  the  "fall,"  but  the 
ascent  of  man.  The  popular  conception  of  Chris- 
tendom was  well  summed  up  by  old  Dr.  South — the 
famous  English  divine — when  he  pictured  Adam 
as  the  embodiment  of  all  human  perfection,  of 
whose  greatness  an  Aristotle  or  a  Paul  were  only 
melancholy  ruins  or  fragmentary  remains. 

But  all  this  is  proved  to  be  a  dream.  The  per- 
fect Adam  is  before  us,  "not  behind.      We  have 


20  The  Change  of  Front 

not  fallen  away  from  but  are  progressing  towards 
him. 

Let  US  look,  then,  at  the  outline  of  the  ecclesias- 
tical scheme  of  salvation.  Of  course,  as  I  have 
said,  its  foundation  is  the  fall.  On  that  founda- 
tion rest  the  Incarnation,  the  Sufferings  and  the 
Death  of  Christ  as  the  essential  factors  in  the  doc- 
trine of  atonement,  which  makes  it  possible  for 
God  to  save.  On  these  depend  the  infallible 
Bible,  as  the  needed  vehicle  to  convey  the  news  of 
tkis  scheme  to  the  world,  and  the  Church  with  its 
supernaturally  called  or  gifted  priests  to  expound 
and  apply  it.  Then,  by  perfectly  logical  sequence, 
follow  the  doctrines  of  hell  for  those  who  do  not 
accept  the  redemption,  and  of  heaven  for  those 
who  do.  The  whole  scheme  is  one  consistent 
structure,  dependent  part  on  part,  and  all  together 
resting  on  the  one  foundation  stone, — the  fall  of 
man.  If  man  be  not  fallen,  then  there  is  no  need 
of  Incarnation,  no  need  of  atonement,  no  need  of 
infallible  revelation,  no  need  of  a  special  divinely 
instituted  church,  no  group  of  the  elect  to  rejoice 
over  being  saved  in  heaven,  no  group  of  reprobates 
to  wail  their  loss  in  hell.  But  the  fall  of  man 
crumbles  before  the  breath  of  modern  investiga- 
tion, like  some  long  decayed  substance  when  ex- 
posed to  the  air,  and  the  whole  towering  structure 
of  ecclesiastical  theology  and  ecclesiastical  salva- 
tion totters  and  tumbles  in  the  dust.  It  is  only 
rubbish  to  be  cleared  away  to  make  room  for  the 
temple  of  the  real  man  and  the  living  God. 


of  the  Universe.  21 

Man  is  uot  "lost,"  and  does  not  need  to  be 
"saved.  ''  These  are  terms  that  are  outgrown  and 
ought  to  be  disused.  Come  up  by  slow  processes 
of  growth  from  the  animal  world,  man  carries 
about  him  still,  in  body,  heart  and  brain,  the  cling- 
ing remnants  of  his  old  animality,  survivals  of  his 
origin.  Ignorant,  he  needs  to  learn  the  conditions 
of  a  true  individual  and  social  life.  Not  to  be 
"saved"  then,  but  to  be  educated,  is  his  need — 
educated,  not  in  the  sense  of  head-training  only, 
or  of  being  made  the  receptacle  of  information. 
This  alone  is  partial  and  shallow.  His  whole  nat- 
ure must  be  developed,  until  the  higher  in  him 
rules  the  lower,  and  he  becomes  the  crowned  king 
of  himself,  his  surroundings  and  his  destiny. 

This  much  as  to  the  effect  of  modern  knowledge 
on  our  conceptions  concerning  the  nature  of  man. 
I  must  now  ask  you  to  notice  the  change  that  has 
passed  over  our  thoughts  concerning  God. 

I  speak  of  the  change  that  has  passed  over  our 
thoughts  concerning  God.  It  is  possible  that  some 
of  you  are  thinking  that  change  ought  to  be  com- 
pleted by  our  ceasing  to  think  of  him  altogether. 
Many  are  ready  to  say  that  He  does  not  exist. 
Many  more  assert  with  much  confidence  that  even 
if  He  does  He  must  remain  unknown.  Or,  if  they 
recognize  anything  beyond  natural  phenomena, 
they  are  ready  to  claim  that  the  term,  God,  is  too 
concrete  and  definite  to  be  applied  to  it. 

My  hour  is  too  far  gone  to  make  it  possible  for 
me  now  and  here  to  enter  into  a  discussion  con- 


22  The  Change  of  Front 

cerning  the  divine  existence.  But  fortunately  it  is 
not  necessary — I  can  reach  the  end  I  have  in  view 
without  it.  I  only  care  to  indicate  a  few  things  neo^a- 
iively,  and  hint  a  few  others  that  I  should  be  pre- 
pared to  argue  for  and  defend,  if  this  were  the 
time  and  place  that  called  for  it. 

1.  We  can  no  longer  believe  in  an  individual- 
ized God,  external  to  nature  and  working  on  it  from 
without.  The  conviction  is  forced  upon  us  of  the 
practical  infinity  of  nature;  and  thus  no  room  is 
left  for  an  infinite  of  which  nature  is  no  part.  It 
is  not  God  and  nature  any  longer,  but  God  in  and 
through  natui'e.  What  we  call  natural  law  we  are 
compelled  now  to  regard  as  only  the  method  of 
working  of  that  Power  of  which  natm-e  is  the 
expression.  In  this  conception  there  is  no  place 
for  miracle,  or  for  prayer  regarded  as  a  force 
capable  of  interfering  with  or  changing  the  uni- 
versal order.  It  may  still  be  true  and  grandly 
true,  however,  that  "  They  that  wait  upon  the 
Lord  shall  renew  their  strength."  For,  he  who 
gets  into  accord  with  the  current  of  the  eternal 
forces,  has  all  the  resources  of  omnipotence  at  his 
back.     But — 

2.  Until  we  know  that  this  Power  is  only  blind 
and  unintelligent  force,  there  is  as  much  assump- 
tion  in   saying  "nature"    as   in   saying   "God," 

-  Practical  omnipotence,  intelligible  order,  "  a  stream 
of  tendency"  that  may  be  regarded  as  purpose, 
"  a  power  that  works  for  righteousness  " — these 
are  demonstrable. 


of  the  Universe.  23 

And  if  we  refrain  from  asserting  that  this 
Power  is  "  personal "  and  "  conscious,"  in  the 
ordinary  sense  of  those  words,  it  may  well  be  for 
the  reason  that  He  is  regarded  as  something  un- 
speakably greater  than  these,  instead  of  being 
something  less.  There  is  no  science  yet  that  for- 
bids our  being  awed  by  the  feeling  of 

"  A  Power  that  disturbs  us  with  the  joy 
Of  elevated  thoughts:  a  sense  sublime 
Of  something  far  more  deeply  interfused, 
Whose  dwelling  is  the  light  of  setting  suns, 
And  the  round  ocean,  and  the  living  air, 
And  the  blue  sky,  and  in  the  mind  of  man  — 
A  motive  and  a  spirit  that  impels 
All  thinking  things,  all  objects  of  all  thoughts, 
And  rolls  thro'  all  things." 
Nor   need   we   resist  the    conviction    that    the 
wondrous  order  of  which  we  are  a  part  contains 
within  itself  the  prophecy  of — 

"  One  far  off,  divine  event 
To  which  the  whole  creation  moves." 

This  change  of  front  on  the  part  of  the  universe 
does  not,  then,  put  religion  behind  us  or  make  it  a 
thing  either  antiquated  or  outgrown.  There  are 
two  large  classes  of  people  at  the  present  time, 
one  of  which  hopes  that  science  is  going  to  destroy 
religion,  and  the  other  fears  it.  I  find  myself 
unable  to  sympathize  with  either  of  them.  I  re- 
gard religion  as  something  inherent  and  essential 
in  the  life  of  a  conscious,  intelligent  and  progress- 
ive race  like  man.  Its  necessity  and  permanence 
will  appear  if  we  only  get  clearly  in  our  minds  a 
definition  of  the  thing  itself.     When  the  biologist 


24  The  Change  of  Front 

defines  the  vertebrate  class  of  animals  he  does  not 
concern  himself  with  the  thousand  varying  exter- 
nal peculiarities  of  this  particular  vertebrate  or 
that,  but  he  fixes  his  attention  on  the  essential  and 
unvarying   characteristics.     Let    us    pursue    this 
scientific  method  in  order  to  get  a  definition  for 
religion.     We  shall  find  it  then  to  be  man's  thought 
concerning  the  relation  in  which  he  stands  to  the 
universe  or  to  the  powers  or  power  which  he  thinks 
of  as  governing  it.     This  thought,  is  of  course,  ac- 
companied by  emotions,  and  these  emotions  find 
expression  in  prayer,  rituals,   altars,  temples,  or 
whatever  is  regarded  as  their  fitting  outward  em- 
bodiment.    And  the  emotions  themselves  will  be 
slavish,  or    rand  and  ennobling,  according  to  the 
crudeness  or  grandeur  of  the  thought.     But  since 
the  ritual  and  the  emotion  follow  and  are  governed 
by  the  thought,  it  is  easily  seen  that  the  thought 
is  the  prime  essential.     And  since  man  must  always 
have  some  thought  as  to  the  relation  in  which  he 
stands  to  the  universe:  and  as  this  thousrht,  what- 
ever  it  be,  must  always  be  accompanied  by  emo- 
tion,   and  must  find    expression   in    action,    it  is 
obvious  that  this,  which  is  the  very  essence   and 
soul  of  all  religion,  can  never  be  outgrown  or  left 
behind.     This  definition  covers  fetich -worship;  it 
covers  Christianity;  it  covers    atheism,    which   is 
only  the  obverse  side  of  the  current  coin  of  religion; 
and  it  equally  covers  the  Cosmic  Theism  of  Mr. 
John  Fiske's  Spencerian  Evolutionism ;  and  it  must 
cover  forever  any  attitude  that  the  human  mind 


of  the  Universe.  25 

may  assume  in  its  endeavor  to  solve  or  deal  with 
this  great  problem.  The  finite  mind  in  an  infinite 
universe,  can  never  escape  awe  and  reverence  and 
admiration — which  are  the  soul  of  worship — except 
as  it  escapes  that  which  is  noblest  and  best  in  all 
true  manhood.  As  well  then  may  the  eagle  think 
to  outsoar  the  atmosphere  in  which  it  finds  lever- 
age for  its  wings  ;  as  well  may  a  ship-captain 
expect  to  outsail  the  sea,  or  transcend  the  horizon 
which  closes  him  round — as  for  man  to  think  it 
possible  for  him  to  transcend  the  limits  of  religious 
thought  and  emotion. 

The  modern  conception  of  the  universe  quenches 
the  light  of  no  ancient  truth  any  more  than  the  dis- 
coveries of  Copernicus  put  out  the  stars  that  shone 
on  Ptolemy. 

"  Kopernik's  thought  a  new  world  made, 
Though  Ptolemy's  stars  still  shone; 
New  truth  a  new  religion  gave, 
But  not  a  truth  was  gone." 

The  new  discoveries  only  distinguish  the  false 
from  the  true,  and  set  the  eternal  lights  of  re- 
ligion and  morality  in  their  true  relation,  as  parts 
of  the  eternal  order.  And  not  only  this,  there  is 
another  grand  thought  that  seems  to  me  to  have 
very  rarely,  if  ever,  found  adequate  recognition. 
All  the  religions  of  the  earth  have  in  essence  beert 
one,  and  must  be  to  the  end  of  time.  A  golden 
thread  of  continuity  runs  through  them  all  and 
binds  them,  like  beads,  on  one  string. 

The  differences  have  been  only   differences  in 


26  The  Change  of  Front 

man's  mental  and  moral  capacity  for  finding  and 
cherishing  a  lower  or  higher  thought  concerning 
man  and  the  universe.  This  binding  thread  is  the 
essential  purpose  that  has  animated  and  inspired 
them  all.  What  then  is  this  one  essence?  Man 
has  always  had  some  theory  of  his  own  nature,  and 
his  theory  of  the  powers  or  power  outside  of  him  ; 
and  he  haj  always  felt  that  his  destiny  depended 
on  the  relation  between  himself  and  this  external 
power.  His  one  grand  effort  then  has  always  been 
to  establish  and  maintain  such  relations  as  would 
make  this  power  favorable  to  his  own  welfare. 
This  is  true  of  the  Indian  offering  tobacco  on  the 
stump  of  a  tree ;  it  is  true  of  the  Jewish  High 
Priest  in  his  temple  ;  it  is  true  of  Christianity  in 
its  highest  manifestation  ;  it  is  true  of  Comte  with 
his  religion  of  humanity  ;  it  is  true  of  science  in 
its  broadest  and  loftiest  generalizations.  Indeed, 
this  is  nothing  else  than  the  secret  of  life  itself. 
The  religious  search  has  always  been  the  search  for 
the  secret  of  life  ;  and  the  search  of  science  can 
be  nothing  less  and  nothing  other.  All  old  forms 
and  names  may  be  discarded.  All  past  theologies 
may  be  swept  away.  But  the  thing  itself,  the 
heart  and  soul  of  religion,  will  escape  all  eclipses, 
will  burst  through  all  clouds,  and  after  every  night 
will  arise  afresh  like  the  unexhausted  sun,  with  his 
unerring  aiTows  of  light  piercing  through  every  foe, 
still  cheering  and  leading  on  the  race  forerer  with 
his  deathless  beams. 

But  now  a  question  rises  which  is  of  immense 


of  the  Universe.  27 

practical  importance.  Is  the  world,  poorer  for  the 
change  that  has  come  into  the  religious  attitude  of 
man?  It  is  perfectly  naiiiral  that  it  should  be 
opposed  by  ignorance  and  by  fear.  It  is  perfectly 
natural  that  vested  interests  should,  oppose  it.  For 
never  yet  did.  the  world  take  any  great  step  in  ad- 
vance except  at  the  cost  of  temporary  discomfort 
and  loss.  Never  yet  was  old  field  plowed  with- 
out for  the  time  destroying  the  freshness  and 
beauty  of  grasses  and  flowers.  And  never  was  a 
mouse's  nest  overturned  by  the  plow  but  she  must 
have  thought  the  world  was  coming  to  an  end.  It 
is  perfectly  natural  that  sentiment  should  oppose 
it.  For  change  of  mental  home  means  home- sick- 
ness as  much  as  change  of  physical  residence. 
Perhaps  we  may  not  wonder,  then,  that  Wordsworth 
should  protest  against  the  scientific  analysis  of 
nature,  and  feel  for  a  time  that  it  was  destroying 
the  poetry  of  the  world.  We  will  then  be  patient 
with  him  while  he  exclaims — 

"  Great  God!    I'd  rather  be 

A  pagan  suckled  in  a  creed  outworn  ; 
So  might  I,  standing  on  this  pleasant  lea, 

Have  glimpses  that  would  make  me  less  forlorn, 
Have  sight  of  Proteus  coming  from  the  sea, 

Or  hear  old  Triton  blow  his  wreathed  horn." 
We  will  be  patient,  I  say,  with  his  temporary 
feeling;  and  yet  we  will  also  feel  firmly  persuaded 
that  poetry  shall  suffer  no  loss.  On  the  contrarj", 
we  will  confidently  look  for  a  grander  poetry  yet  to 
spring  up  to  fit  the  grander  universe  that  science 
has  revealed.     We  will  willingly  exchange  Proteiis 


28  The  Change  of  Front 

and  Triton  for  the  grander  creations  of  a  fancy 
whose  wings  shall  have  free  range  through  the  in- 
finite complexities  of  the  infinite  order.  Neither 
will  we  be  surprised  when  Holmes  confronts  us 
with  his  challenge,  or  when  for  a  time  he  forgets 
the  horrors  of  the  past,  and  remembers  only  ^  the 
faith,  that,  like  a  timid  bird,  built  for  awhile  its  nest 
in  some  sheltering  angle  of  some  Middle  Age  tur- 
ret that  stood  as  a  symbol  of  robbery  and  wrong. 
As  he  watches  the  encroachments  of  modem 
thought  he  cries  out, — 

"  Is  this  the  whole  sad  story  of  creation, 

Lived  by  its  breathing  myriads  o'er  and  o'er, — 
One  glimpse  of  day,  then  black  annihilation, 
A  sunlit  passage  to  a  sunless  shore? 

"Give  back  our  faith,  ye  mystery-solving  lynxes; 
Robe  us  once  more  in  heaven-aspiring  creeds; 
Happier  was  dreaming  Egypt  with  her  sphynxes. 
The  stony  convent  with  its  cross  and  beads." 

I  have  only  tenderest  sympathy  for  the  feeling  that 
expresses  its  apprehension  thus.  And  yet  I  have  no 
sort  of  fear  that  the  apprehension  is  well  founded. 
Since  the  true  religion  can  be  nothing  else  but  true 
adjustment  between  the  universe  and  man  it  is  not 
possible  that  a  deeper  and  broader  knowledge  of 
the  truth  should  be  anything  else  than  a  grand  ad- 
vance and  development  of  religion  itself. 

But  I  am  one  of  those  who  hold  that  no  faith  at 
all — even  were  that  the  end — would  be  better  than 
the  dominant  faith  of  the  past.    Even  Mr.  Beecher, 


of  the  Universe.  29 

in  his  recent  North  American  Review  article,  has 
said,  "If  the  groat  truth  of  evolution  led  to  unbe- 
lief, it  could  not  be  so  bad  as  that  impious  and  ma- 
lignant representation  of  God  and  His  government 
which  underlies  all  media3val  and  most  of  modern 
theology."  The  happiness  of  dreaming  Egypt 
and  the  happiness  of  the  mediaeval  heaven  are  all 
sweet  and  fair;  but  what  of  the  horrors  of  the  one, 
or  the  hell  of  the  other?  In  the  words  of  Tenny- 
son must  we  not  say  ? 

"What!     I  shall  call  on  that  infinite  love  that  has 

served  us  so  well  ? 
Infinite  wickedness  ra*^her  that  made  everlasting 

hell! 
Made  us,  foreknew  us,  foredoomed  us,  and  does 

what  he  will  with  his  own? 
Better  our  dead  brute   mother   who   never  has 

heard  us  groan ! 
The  god  of  love  and  of  hell  together,  they  can  not 

be  thought. 
If  there  be  such  a  god  may  the  great  God  curse 

him  and  bring  him  to  naught. 
Blasphemy?     I  have  scared  you  pale  with  my 

scandalous  talk; 
Bat  the  blasphemy  to  my  mind  is  all  in  the  way 

you  walk." 

No,  friends,  I  do  not  want  any  heaven  at  the 
price  of  the  undying  anguish  of  the  meanest  man 
that  ever  lived.  Let  us  all  sleep  together,  if  need 
be,  in  a  night  that  never  shall  know  morning.  Biit 
do  not  mock  me  with  the  offer  of  an  endless  song 
in  any  mouth  that  shall  have  for  echo  aa  endless 
groan  on  the  burning  lips  of  an  outca^it  brother! 


30  The  Change  of  Front 

When  men  talk  to  me  about  its  being  a  loss  to 
give  up  my  faith  in  the  fall,  in  total  depravity,  in 
an  angry  God,  in  hell,  I  cannot  for  the  life  of  me 
feel  sorry.  And  if  with  these  I  must  give  up 
heaven  itself,  then  farewell  heaven,  and  welcome 
dreamless  sleep. 

I  do  not  for  one  moment  admit  that  this  is  the 
alternative  ;  I  do  not  for  a  moment  surrender  my 
hope  for  the  future.  I  cannot  treat  of  that,  to- 
day ;  but  I  wish  only  to  say,  with  all  the  emphasis 
of  my  soul,  that  even  were  heaven  the  price  to  be 
paid  for  deliverance  from  the  past  I  would  pay  it 
gladly,  and  thank  God,  even  with  tears  of  joy,  for 
the  rest  of  the  grave. 

With  one  brief  thought  more  I  am  done.  These 
readjustment  and  transition  times  carry  with  them 
upheaval,  displacement  and  loss.  But  all  this 
comes  from  the  false  conceptions  of  the  past.  A 
smooth-flowing  river  glasses  the  peaceful  stars  and 
carries  verdure  and  life  for  all  its  shores.  But  dam 
its  current  until  the  swelling  pressure  becomes  re- 
sistless, and  then  the  obstruction  gives  way  and  the 
freshet  sweeps  everything  before  it,  and  the  coun- 
try is  devastated.  Not  the  river,  however,  but  the 
obstruction  is  the  source  of  the  ruin.  When  re- 
ligion is  taught  to  men  as  a  complete  and  finished 
revelation,  it  becomes  a  moveless  obstruction  to 
human  thought.  It  holds  the  world  back  until  the 
onward  pressure  of  human  progress  becomes  too 
powerful  to  be  longer  checked.  Then  it  gives 
way  ;  and  for  the  time,  human  life  is  devastated 


of  the  Universe.  31 

and  human  faith  is  drowned.  But  let  a  truer  con- 
ception of  religion  prevail ;  let  men  learn  that  the 
truth  of  the  universe  is  infinite,  and  that  the  secret 
of  the  growing  life  of  man  is  in  an  ever  nearer  and 
nearer  approximation  to  this  infinite  truth,  and  re- 
ligion will  no  longer  be  a  thing  of  leaps  and  breaks 
and  cataclysms  ;  but  rather  a  progressive  and  ever 
advancing  adjustment  of  the  finite  to  the  infinite  and 
all-embracing  life  of  the  universe.  Thus  the  peace 
of  religion,  as  well  as  of  the  human  heart,  shall  be 
"  as  a  river." 

This  change  of  front  of  the  universe  then  puts 
behind  us  all  the  past  of  fear,  of  an  angry  heaven, 
and  a  scathed  and  despairing  earth.  We  look 
up  the  futiu-e,  along  a  pathway  lighted  by  ever 
brighter  and  brighter  suns,  and  arched  over  by 
a  sky  whose  cheerful  blue  hides  no  frown  of  deity 
or  scowl  of  eternal  hate.  "  The  low,  sad  music  of 
humanity  "  sinks  slowly  fainter  and  fainter  down 
the  past,  while  the  future,  dimly  seen,  and  far  away, 
gives  utterance  to  the  deathless  hope  of  man — "  Be- 
hold !     I  make  all  things  new. " 


THE  FULLNESS  OF  GOD. 

SAMUEL    ROBERT    CALTHROP. 

"The  fullness  of  Him  that  flUeth  all  in  all."— 
Ephesians  i.,  23. 

A  magnificent,  an  ovei-whelming  conception. 
God  filling  all  things  up  with  Himself,  so  that  there  is 
no  room  for  anything  else !  God,  who  is  all  in  all ; 
God,  in  whom  all  atoms,  worlds,  and  beings  live 
and  move;  God,  in  whom  all  space,  power,  beauty, 
wisdom,  justice,  thought,  love,  and  life  exist  for  ever 
and  ever;  God,  in  whom  man  lives;  God,  whose 
space  and  force  sun-ound,  interpenetrate,  and  in- 
clude the  body  of  man,  whose  thought  and  wisdom 
enlighten  the  mind  of  man,  whose  justice  gives  law 
to  the  conscience  of  man,  whose  love  rejoices  the 
heart  of  man,  and  whose  life  sun'ounds,  interpene- 
trates, and  includes  the  life  of  man, — God  is  the 
transcendent  theme  of  our  meditation  to-day. 

The  theme  being  so  vast,  it  will  be  wise  for  us  to 
deal  with  it  in  detail, — in  fragments,  so  to  speak. 
Let  us,  then,  take  up  one  by  one  the  attributes  of 
God.  Seeing  only  one  side  of  God  at  a  time,  as  it 
were,  we  shall  be  sheltered,  as  Moses  was,  by  cleft 
of  rock  and  shadow  of  hand  from  the  full  blaze  of 
the  ineffable  glory. 

Let  us  then  say,  first  of  all,  that,  since  God  is  all 
in  all, — that  is,  is  strictly  infinite, — all  the  attrib- 
utes of  God  are  infinite.     Each  attribute  is  coex- 

33 


34  The  Fullness  of  God. 

tensive  with  every  other  attribute.  Where  any  one 
attribute  exists,  there  every  other  attribute  coexists 
with  it.  Where  space  exists,  there  power,  thought, 
wisdom,  beauty,  truth,  justice,  love,  exist;  for  all 
these  are  attributes  of  God,  modes  of  the  being  of 
God. 

I.  The  space  of  God  is  infinite,  and  is  coexten- 
sive with  all  the  attributes  of  God.  Spinoza,  the 
father  of  modern  Scientific  Philosophy,  was,  as 
Schleiermacher  lovingly  called  him,  "a  God-intoxi- 
cated man."  He  saw  all  things  in  God.  And  yet 
all  that  most  men  know,  or  rather  misknow,  about 
him,  is  that  he  granted  just  two  attributes  to  God, — 
extension  and  thought.  Granted  ?  Why,  the  man 
lived  in  God!  To  him  God  was  all  in  all.  What 
he  did  say  was  this:  "  God,  being  infinite,  lives  in 
infinite  modes;  and  two  of  these  modes  are  exten- 
sion and  thought."  Out  of  the  infinite  number  of 
modes,  he  selected  these  two,  simply  because  they 
are  not  only  so  closely  related  to  man's  own  exist- 
ence, experience,  and  thought,  but  also  because  on 
these  two  modes,  as  foundation,  he  builds  his  scheme 
of  the  universe. 

The  mind  demands  the  origin  of  the  visible  uni- 
verse ;  that  is,  demands  something  for  that  universe 
to  rise  out  of.  But  the  mind  also  demands  that 
that'  something  shall  itself  be  unoriginated,  as  other- 
wise thought  would  find  no  resting-place.  Two 
postulates  will  forever  be  essential  to  any  system  of 
thought:  1.  Unoriginated  Substance;  2.  Unorigi- 
nated Space.     On  these  as  basis,  the  whole  universe 


The  Fullness  of  God.  35 

can  be  constructed.  If,  with  Spinoza,  we  consider 
space  an  essential  attribute  of  substance,  then  Un- 
originated  Infinite  Substance  is  the  one  all-sufficient 
postulate,  which  being  granted,  the  origin  of  the 
visible  universe  is  only  a  question  of  detail. 

Our  one  postulate,  then,  is  Unoriginated,  Infinite 
Substance.  In  other  words,  our  one  postulate  is 
God.  This  mighty  postulate  once  granted,  all 
things,  beings,  worlds,  are  modes  of  motion  of  his 
Spirit.  The  material  universe  is  fated  or  uniform 
motion:  the  spiritual  universe  is  free  or  independ- 
ent motion.  In  God  alone  do  all  things  find  their 
true  substance. 

There  are  other  good  reasons  why,  in  our  analysis 
of  the  attributes  of  God,  we  should  begin,  as  Spi- 
noza did,  with  space.  Space  is  the  first  attribute 
of  God  of  which  the  infant  mind  becomes  con- 
scious. Indeed,  we  may  say  it  is  the  one  attribute 
of  God  of  which  all  organisms  are  more  or  less 
conscious.  The  reason  why  the  commonest  minds 
know  something  about  space  is  that  they  have  a 
vast  organic  inheritance  of  space-perceptions  be- 
hind them.  Other  organisms  have  labored,  and 
they  have  entered  into  their  labors.  It  is  well, 
therefore,  to  begin  where  experience  begins. 

There  are,  however,  difficulties  on  the  threshold 
of  our  examination,  which  could  completely  block 
the  way,  if  they  were  not  got  rid  of.  The  first 
class  is  the  besetment  of  ordinary  minds.  There 
is  an  absurd  notion  floating  about  that  space  some- 
how exists  of   itself,  independently  of  any  being 


36  The  Fullness  of   God. 

whatever.  God,  therefore,  I  suppose,  in  the  far 
past  found  space  conveniently  lying  round,  and 
wisely  made  use  of  it  for  creative  purposes  There 
must  therefore  be  two  independent  existences, — 
God  and  space;  for  there  would  be  no  room  for 
creation  if  space  did  not  kindly  lend  itself  to  His 
design.  Or,  perhaps,  the  two  high  contracting  par- 
ties agreed  on  equal  terms,  one  to  create  and  the 
other  to  find  room  for  creation. 

The  mere  verbal  statement  of  the  logical  out- 
come of  these  vague  notions  is  enough  to  show  their 
absurdity. 

The  other  class  of  difficulties  besets  more  thought- 
ful minds.  When  a  clever  man  has  thought  him- 
self into  a  fog  about  space,  he  is  apt  to  imagine 
himself  quite  a  metaphysician — especially  if  he  can 
repeat  some  perfectly  unintelligible  formula  about 
space. 

To  quote  a  familiar  unintelligibility,  "  Space  is 
a  form  of  thought."  Now,  thought  is  a  mode  of 
motion.  Human  thought  is  a  mode  of  motion  of 
the  human  brain,  corresponding  to  and  accompa- 
nying a  motion  of  the  human  spirit.  But  motion 
is  not  a  thing:  it  is  a  state  of  a  thing.  The  motion 
of  a  snowflake  is  not  the  snowflake:  it  is  a  state  of 
a  snowflake..  Therefore,  the  expression,  "  Space  is 
a  form  of  thought,"  is  equivalent  to  this  other, 
"Space  is  a  state  of  the  human  brain."  If,  then, 
you  really  mean  that  Space  is  a  state  of  the  small 
human  brain,  whose  space-filling  cavity  is  only  a 


The  Fullness  of  God.  37 

few  cubic  inches,  this  is  not  simply  absurdity;  it  is 
delirium. 

If,  however,  you  say,  "Space  is  the  form  of 
thought," — meaning  by  the  form  the  mould  in  which 
all  thought  is,  of  necessity,  cast, — you  have  stated 
a  great  truth,  no  longer  a  piece  of  metaphysical 
moonshine. 

If,  again,  you  say,  "  Space  is  a  form  of  the 
thought  of  God,"  this  is  no  longer  an  absurdity:  it 
is  only  a  confusing  of  two  coexistent,  infinite  at- 
tributes of  God, — extension  and  thought.  God's 
thought,  being  infinite,  is  coextensive  with  God's 
space. 

So  much  for  these  two  classes  of  difficulty.  There 
are  signs  abroad  that  they  are  both  steadily  dimin- 
ishing. Ordinary  minds  are  being  educated  into 
an  awe-struck  sense  of  the  immensity  of  space;  and 
thoughtful  minds  are  becoming  weary  cf  the  end- 
less treadmill  of  bad  definition,  mounted  upon  which 
a  man  can  keep  on  walking  upward  forever,  with- 
out rising  a  single  inch. 

I  had  gone  thus  far,  when  I  was  summoned  fi'om 
my  desk  by  a  friendly  visit  fi-om  a  book- agent. 
Silver  and  gold  had  I  none,  but  what  I  had  I  gave. 
I  showed  him  a  grand  sun-spot  in  the  telescope. 
He  was  evidently  deeply  impressed,  and  suddenly 
burst  forth  with  this:  "The  one  thine:  that  over- 
awes  and  overwhelms  me  is  the  infinity  of  space!  I 
can't  take  it  in!  "  When  a  book- agent  is  overawed, 
it  is  a  note  of  advance  all  along  the  line. 

But  to  proceed.     Space  is  the  necessary  substra- 


93528 


38  The  Fullness  of  God. 

tmn  upon  which,  as  foundation,  all  things  stand. 
As  all  motion  is  performed  in  time,  so  all  existence 
takes  place  in  space. 

Here  it  is  essential  to  sweep  away  at  once  the  ten 
thousand  illusions  which  beset  thoughtful  minds 
when  they  first  begin  to  think  about  space.  We 
constantly  hear  such  expressions  as  these :  "  Thought 
requires  no  space,  feelingshave  no  space-relations." 
The  act  of  thought  or  emotion,  we  are  told,  is 
purely  spiritual,  meaning  by  spiritual  something 
that  has  no  space-relations  at  all.  Now,  no  entity 
exists  that  has  no  space-relations :  each  and  every 
part  of  every  being  is  always  and  everywhere  re- 
lated to  space. 

Thought  in  the  human  body  is  a  wave  vibration; 
and  a  wave  vibration  must  be  of  something,  and  not 
nothing.  No  matter  whether  the  vibration  be  of 
brain  and  nerve,  or  of  something  ineffably  finer, 
which  corresponds  to  an  archangel's  thought  as 
these  do  to  man's  thought, — always  and  every- 
where, thought  will  be  a  particular  state  of  a 
being  who  is   wholly  immersed  in  space-relations. 

Christianity  has  always  believed  in  the  spiritual 
body;  that  is,  in  the  continuance  of  natural  and 
intelligible  space-relations  in  the  life  beyond  death. 
If,  however,  we  take  for  granted  the  possibility  of 
pui'ely  bodiless  finite  spirit,  that  purely  bodiless 
spirit  will  be  as  completely  immersed  in  space  as 
rock,  plant,  animal,  or  man,  will  have  as  perfect 
space-relations  with  the  All  and  with  each  finite 
thing  as  if  it  were  a  ball  of  iron.     As  an  example 


The  Fullness  of  God.  89 

of  moonshiny  thinking,  I  take  an  instance  from  a 
really  fine  modern  thinker.  "We  might  as  well 
talk,"  he  says,  "  of  pure  spirit  being  white  or  black 
or  green  as  speak  of  it  being  either  here  or  there." 
This  is  simply  idealism  gone  mad,  and  it  is  not  too 
much  to  say  that  no  scientific  metaphysics  will  ever 
be  possible  to  minds  that  have  not  got  rid  of  these 
prescientific  notions. 

In  the  deepest  sense,  then,  we  may  say  that  Space 
is  The  All,  including  within  itself  all  forms  of  be  - 
ing,  all  matter,  all  spirit,  and  all  manifestations  of 
both  matter  and  spirit;  and  Space,  to  all  alike,  is 
that  underlying  reality  without  which  none  of  them 
would  be  conceivable. 

To  the  archangel, — that  is,  to  the  fully  developed 
man, — Space  is  the  Presence  of  God,  the  fullness 
of  Him  that  filleth  all  in  all,  in  whose  fullness  are 
included  all  power,  all  beauty,  all  intelligence,  all 
truth,  all  tenderness. 

This  stupendous  thought,  the  greatest  that  a 
finite  mind  can  grasp,  is  just  dawning  on  the  mind 
of  man.  He  has  begun  to  behold  the  rising  light, 
who  sees  that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  empty  space. 
From  this,  he  can  proceed  to  construct  his  universe. 

The  child  first  learns  that  the  earth  is  a  sphere 
eight  thousand  miles  thick.  The  man,  all  his  life 
long,  is  busied  in  filling  up  this  conception,  until,  at 
last,  each  inch  of  that  sphere  is  seen  to  be  full  of 
power  and  wonder  and  beauty.  Oceans  and  conti- 
nents, mountains  and  valleys,  tropic  splendors  and 
icy  poles,  forests  of  a  thousand  woods,  flowers  of 


40  The  Fullness  of  God. 

myriad  hues,  marts  and  cities  and  homes  of  men, 
steamships  ploughing  the  mighty  deep,  trains 
rushing  across  the  continents,  wires  flashing  their 
electric  message, — all  the  inconceivable  variety  of 
human  life, — all  this  he  sees  on  its  surf  ace  alone ; 
while,  beneath  his  feet,  his  thought  penetrates  be- 
low the  roots  of  the  mountains  to  that  hidden  ocean 
of  living  fire  which  eye  of  man  shall  never  see. 

Just  so  the  first  lesson  for  man  as  a  child  to  learn 
is  that  Space  is  infinite;  that  he  can  send  his 
thought  onward  for  ever  and  ever  in  every  direc- 
tion, and  still  find  himself  in  the  very  center  of 
things.  Developed  man  is  to  fill  up  this  skeleton 
conception  with  all  worlds  and  beings  that  are: 
with  galaxy  after  galaxy  filled  with  light  and  life ; 
with  destinies  innumerable  in  trillions  and  trillions 
of  planetary  homes;  with  power,  justice,  wisdom, 
truth,  and  love  vindicating  themselves  everywhere, 
in  everything;  while  through  all,  above  all,  around 
all,  and  in  all  shine  the  light,  life,  and  glory  of  the 
One  Eternal,  in  whom  are  all  things  and  by  whom 
all  things  consist. 

II.  The  power  of  God  is  infinite,  and  is  coexten- 
sive with  space  and  with  all  the  other  attributes  of 
God. 

All  space  is  powerful  space.  There  is  no  such 
thing  as  a  power-vacuum.  Empty  space  is  an 
empty  phrase.  ^There  is  no  cubic  inch  of  empty 
space  in  the  whole  universe.  Take  a  cubic  inch  of 
space  midway  between  the  sun  and  Sinus.  Through 
that  cubic  inch  the  light  and  heat  of  Sirius  pass. 


The  Fullness  of  God.  41 

Let  us  analyze  the  beam  by  the  spectroscope,  and 
see  what  this  means.     Commencing  at  the  ultra-red 
end  of  the  spectrum,  let  us  start  with  the  invisible 
heat  waves.     The   longest  of  these   we  may  call 
TTj,W   of   an  inch    in   length;  that  is,    our  cubic 
inch  will  contain  30,000  such  waves.     Omitting  all 
delicate  gradations  of    half-waves,  quarter-waves, 
and  so  on,  we  will  consider  the  next  group  to  be 
those  waves  of  which  there  are  30,001  to  the  inch, 
and  the  next  30,002,  and  so  on.     Each  group  of 
waves  is  present  in  the  cubic  inch  at  the  self -same 
instant,  and  each  passes  through  without  the  least 
interference  from  the  other.     When  we  arrive  at 
40,000  to  the  inch,  we  are  well  inside  the  visible 
'  red;   and  we  must  keep  adding  40,001,  40,002,  etc., 
to  our  series  of  waves.     At  50,000  to  the  inch,  we 
are  in  the  center  of  the  visible  spectrum,  and  keep 
on  adding,  remembering  all  the  while  that  the  yel- 
low and  green  waves  are  wholly  independent  of  the 
red.     At  60,000  to  the  inch,  we  are  in  the  violet, 
and  keep  on  adding  as  before.     At  70,000,  80,000, 
90,000,    100,000,    we  obtain  wave-lengths   in   the 
ultra-violet,  invisible  chemical  waves,  each  group 
being  completely  present  in  the  cubic  inch,  and  each 
being  absolutely  independent  of  all  the  rest.     At 
last,  we  have  obtained  a  fair  notion  of  the  number 
of  waves  which  are  present  in  our  cubic  inch  at  the 
self -same  instant  from  Sirius  alone;  that  is,  if  we 
considered  Sirius  to  be  a  simple  tiny  point  of  flame 
instead  of  being  a  mighty  globe  millions  of  miles 
in  diameter,  each  square  inch  of  whose  siirf  ace  sends 


42  The  Fullness  of  God. 

forth  a  series  of  such  waves.  At  the  same  instant 
there  is  present  in  the  cubic  inch  a  similar  series  of 
waves  from  every  square  inch  of  Arcturus,  each 
wave  of  which  does  not  interfere  in  the  slightest 
degree  with  the  waves  of  Sirius;  also,  from  Vega, 
Canopus,  Eegulus,  and  the  six  thousand  stars  visi- 
ble to  the  naked  eye  and  the  twenty  million  stars 
visible  in  a  great  telescope.  Also,  from  the  innu- 
merable planets,  whose  faint  light  no  telescope  is 
fine  enough  to  catch,  a  series  equal  in  number  to 
those  of  Sirius  is  present  at  the  same  instant  in 
that  same  cubic  inch.  But  how  long  is  that  instant  ? 
As  light  travels  190,000  miles  in  a  second,  this  in- 
conceivable series  ii  changed  into  an  entirely  new 
series  twelve  billion  times  a  second.  Space  is  empty ! 
But  this  is  only  one  set  of  space -relations.  Through 
that  inch,  the  gravitating  relations  of  Sirius  with 
the  whole  universe  in  a  straight  line  beyond  that 
inch  pass;  and  you  must  prolong  that  gi'avitating 
line  to  infinity  for  Sirius  alone.  Then  a  similar 
line  for  Arcturus,  Vega,  and  the  twenty  millions  of 
suns  in  our  galaxy,  and  the  billion  planets,  and  the 
uncounted  nebulee,  and  the  infinite  number  of  atoms 
of  star-dust.  Through  that  inch,  all  this  passes 
simultaneously;  and,  at  every  instant,  a  difPerent 
line  is  drawn,  as  each  of  these  trillions  of  objects 
moves  on  its  destined  course.  Each  change  in  a 
star  quintillions  of  miles  away  is  instantly,  without 
any  time  interval  whatever,  reported  in  that  inch, 
so  that  the  movement  of  the  whole  universe  inces 
santly  registers  itself  inside  that  inch.     If  an  arch- 


The  Fullness  of  God.  43 

angel,  after  millions  of  years  of  study,  could  thor- 
oughly know  what  goes  on  in  that  inch,  we  might 
say  that  he  knew  the  universe. 

The  exactness  of  God  is  in  that  inch.  Not  a 
single  one  of  this  infinite  number  of  results  regis- 
ters itself  there  wrongly,  either  as  to  quality  or 
quantity. 

The  economy  of  God  is  in  that  inch.  Not  one 
vibration  lost ;  not  a  single  wave  that  does  not  pro- 
duce its  fiill  effect;  not  an  ounce  of  gravitation 
wasted. 

The  beauty  of  God  registers  itself  in  that  inch. 
Apply,  in  imagination,  a  microscope  magnifying 
trillions  of  diameters  to  that  inch.  Imagine  each 
light-wave  illumined,  each  with  its  appropriate 
color;  each  mingling  with  every  other,  with  infinite 
perfection  of  shape  and  curve;  each  running  through 
each,  without  displacement,  confusion,  injury,  or 
loss;  and,  if  the  watching  of  sunlight  or  moonlight 
in  its  play  upon  the  countless  waves  of  lake  or  ocean 
be  indescribably  beautiful,  what  would  such  a  sight 
as  this  be  ?  The  beauty  of  God  is  infinite,  and  is 
coextensive  with  space. 

The  love  of  God  is  in  that  inch.  To  whose  eyes 
do  these  light- waves  bring  messages  of  cheer?  To 
whose  heart  does  day  utter  speech  ?  To  whose  mind 
doth  night  show  knowledge  ?  Who  inhabit  the  worlds 
that  gravitation  holds  together?  In  a  word,  for 
whose  sake  is  all  this  done  ?  Out  of  the  infinite 
number  of  acts  of  power  that  pass  tkrough  that  inch 
(and,  in  that  inch,  we  may  well  say  that  the  whole 


44  The  Fullness  of  God. 

universe  registers  itself  at  each  moment),  not  a  sin- 
gle one  can  be  detected  which  is  for  the  benefit  or 
advantage  of  God.  All,  without  exception,  are  acts 
of  bounty  to  His  finite  children.  The  love  of  God  is 
infinite,  and  is  coextensive  with  space.  The  devout 
mediaeval  man  knelt  in  awe-struck  ecstasy  before  the 
throne  of  God.  Around  that  throne,  the  archangels 
stood,  rank  above  rank.  Around  that  throne  wheeled 
the  host  of  suns  and  stars.  From  thence,  through 
the  realms  of  space,  flew  thick  and  fast  the  arrows 
of  His  will.  From  thence,  He  ordered  all  things  in 
heaven  and  earth ;  and  yet  not  Saint  Bernard  him- 
self, in  highest  rapture  of  devotion,  could  conceive, 
as  sitting  on  that  throne,  as  much  power,  wisdom, 
beauty,  and  benignity  as  dwells  in  one  single  inch 
of  space. 

III.  The  exactness  of  God  is  infinite,  and  is  co- 
extensive with  space  and  all  the  other  attributes  of 
God. 

The  Archangel  Mathesis  forever  stands  at  the 
right  hand  of  the  throne  of  God.  She  claims  it, 
not  simply  as  her  right,  but  as  her  duty,  to  calcu- 
late all  of  His  wondrous  ways  that  are  calculable. 
Reverently,  with  folded  wings,  but  firmly,  standing 
on  her  feet,  and  looking  with  undazzled  eye  into  the 
very  blaze  of  the  everlasting  glory,  on  tablets  of 
steel,  with  pen  of  adamant,  she  forecasts  the  results 
of  the  exactness  of  God.  She  claims  as  her  own 
every  motion,  thrill,  and  throb  of  every  atom  of 
matter  in  the  universe.  She  foretells  the  fated  course 
of  the  stars.     She  predicts  the  result  of  every  heave 


Tlie  Fullness  of  God.  45 

of  the  mighty  forces  imprisoned  in  the  bosoms  of  all 
worlds.  No  qiiiver  of  a  leaf,  no  sparkle  of  a  wave, 
no  gleam  of  color  in  the  tiniest  flower,  no  throb  of 
sunlight,  moonlight,  starlight,  escapes  her.  Every 
bone,  muscle,  nerve,  blood  corpuscle,  every  hair-tip, 
every  invisible  molecular  change  in  every  plant  and 
animal,  pays  tribute  to  her.  No  blush  of  a  maid- 
en's cheek,  no  thought  in  a  sage's  brain,  no  thrill  of 
inspiration  in  a  prophet's  heart,  no  ecstasy  of  wor- 
ship in  the  rapt  saint's  inmost  soul,  can  claim  com- 
plete exemption  from  her  all-pervading  scrutiny. 
She  calculates  the  power  of  eveiy  heart-beat,  the 
exact  amount  of  tissue  used  up  in  each  single  thought, 
and  knows  that  no  life-change,  however  sublime  it 
be,  can  ever  go  on  without  her.  The  whole  realm 
of  fate  is  her  province;  and  fate,  she  knows,  is 
the  adamantine  base  on  which  all  finite  freedom 
must  be  built.  And  to  man  she  saith,  "  Thy  wisdom 
is  to  know  this :  on  this  stone  build  the  house  of 
thy  life;  for,  if  it  fall  upon  thee,  it  will  grind  thee 
to  powder." 

IV.  The  economy  of  God  is  infinite,  and  is  coex- 
tensive with  space  and  with  all  the  other  attributes 

of  God- 

The  science  of  the  last  hundred  years  is  one  long 
comment  on  this  mighty  text.  The  eighteenth 
century  discovered  that  matter  cannot  be  destroyed. 
The  nineteenth  century  has  discovered  that  force 
cannot  be  destroyed.  The  twentieth  century  will 
discover  that  mind  cannot  be  destroyed.  No  single 
atom  of  matter  in  all  the  starry  spaces  was  ever  lost; 


46  The  Fullness  of  God. 

nay,  no  atom  has  ever  lost  a  trillionth  part  of  its 
potency.  No  unit  of  force  was  ever  lost.  Unbroken, 
undiminished,  it  keeps  acting  on  the  universe  for 
ever  and  ever.  In  all  the  starry  spaces,  no  mind 
was  ever  lost :  it  keeps  living  on  in  the  midst  of 
God  for  ever  and  ever.  To-day  we  believe,  to- 
morrow we  shall  know, 

"That  nothing  walks  with  aimless  feet; 
That  not  one  life  shall  be  destroyed, 
Or  cast  as  rubbish  to  the  void, 
When  God  hath  made  the  pile  complete." 

Emerson  said  that  '  it  must  be  possible  to  make 
such  a  statement  of  religion  as  would  make  all  scep- 
ticism ridiculous.'  We  are  fast  arriving  at  this. 
Certainly,  we  are  already  able  to  make  a  statement 
concerning  infinite  space  that  makes  all  scepticism 
about  infinite  space  ridiculous.  The  proof  that 
power  ia  coextensive  with  space  makes  all  scepticism 
about  infinite  power  ridiculous.  A  similar  state- 
ment concerning  that  infinite  exactness  and  economy 
which  are  coextensive  with  space  is  becoming  part 
of  mathematics.  Very  soon,  we  shall  have  a  state- 
ment of  infinite  beauty,  justice,  and  love  which  will 
equally  make  all  scepticism  about  them  also  ridic- 
ulous. 

In  the  meantime,  never  call  a  man  an  atheist  who 
believes  in  and  is  greatened  by  one  single  attribute 
of  God,  who  is  awe-struck  with  the  immensity  of 
space  or  ravished  with  the  perception  of  infinite 
beauty.     It  is  a  great  thing  even  to  believe  that 


,  Tlie  Fullness  of  God.  47 

power  is,  and  is  a  rewarder  of  those  who  diligently 
seek  it. 

V.  The  justice  of  God  is  infinite,  and  is  coexten- 
sive with  space  and  all  the  other  attributes  of  God. 

Michael,  the  archangel  of  justice,  standing  at  the 
right  hand  of  God,  with  the  balances  in  his  left 
hand  and  a  drawn  sword  in  his  right,  is  the  twin 
brother  of  Mathesis ;  for  exactness  in  the  material 
world  corresponds  to  justice  in  the  moral  world. 
That  which  a  man  soweth,  that  shall  he  also  reap. 
He  who  sows  to  the  flesh  shall  to  the  flesh  reap  cor- 
ruption, and  he  who  sows  to  the  spirit  shall  to  the 
spirit  reap  life  everlasting. 

The  justice  of  God  is  everywhere,  and  eveiywhere 
makes  right  might,  makes  wrong  weak,  makes  self- 
ishness stab  itself  with  its  own  hands. 

Daily,  the  solar  system  travels  through  its  mill- 
ions of  miles  of  space;  yet  no  one  ever  saw  one  law 
either  alter  or  grow  weak.  For  the  eternal  law  is 
equally  potent  everywhere. 

But  here  comes  a  deeply  needed  caution ;  we 
are  artificially  dividing  God  into  attributes. 

If  you  take  a  red  glass,  you  will  see  the  whole 
view  red.  Take  a  blue  glass,  and  you  will  see  the 
whole  landscape  just  as  well  as  before.  Every  tree, 
hill,  and  house  is  in  the  same  relative  position:  it  is 
simply  colored  differently.  It  was  red:  it  is  now 
blue.     And  so  on  of  all  the  colors. 

Now,  a  red  glass  is  red,  just  because  it  lets  the 
red  rays  through,  and  stops  the  others.  A  blue 
glass  is  blue  for  the  same  reason.     Only  when  you 


48  The  Fullness  of  God. 

get  a  colorless  glass — that  is,  one  that  lets  all  the 
rays  through  with  equal  facility — do  you  see  the 
view  as  it  really  is  innatui'e,  with  its  thousand  hues 
of  green  and  blue  and  gold. 

In  a  precisely  similar  manner,  we  may  behold  the 
Divine  Nature  as  thi'ough  glasses  of  different  hues. 

If  we  look  at  God  through  the  red  glass  of  jus- 
tice, we  shall  see  infinite  space  only  under  the  color 
of  justice.  Star  and  system,  each  vast,  each  tiny 
life,  will  be  there,  only  seen  through  the  monochro- 
matic light  of  justice.  There  will  still  be  due  pro- 
portion to  everything,  for  God's  justice  is  equally 
present  in  everything.  All  space  will  still  be  rep- 
resented, for  God's  justice  is  coextensive  with  God's 
space.  Only,  we  must  carefully  bear  in  mind,  that 
we  are  excluding  from  our  sight  the  tender  shades 
that  are  equally  present  everywhere.  We  are  de- 
liberately making  an  artificial  glare  over  everything. 

But  some  one  may  say:  "But  red  and  yellow, 
green  and  blue,  are  different  from  each  other."  Yes: 
but  they  are  simply  different  movements  of  the  same 
element.  The  immense  ocean  of  ether,  which  is  in 
all  space,  is  one ;  and  red  and  green  and  blue  are 
all  waves  of  that  one  ocean,  differing  in  breadth  and 
height, — that  is  all. 

Just  so  we  must  think  of  power,  justice,  wisdom 
in  God  as  so  many  modes  or  attributes  of  His  one 
infinite  being. 

VI.  The  wisdom  of  God  is  infinite,  and  is  coex- 
tensive with  space  and  all  the  other  attributes  of 
God 


The  Fullness  of  God.  49 

If  an  archangel  had  been  given  the  problem, — 
"  Nothing  but  God  completely  filling  all  space  with 
His  presence.  From  this  to  show  how  universes  of 
matter  and  finite  mind  can  be  created," — the  arch- 
angel himself  would  have  been  baffled. 

How  to  make  shore  and  boundary  in  the  midst  of 
the  fathomless  deep  of  God;  how  to  build  little  local 
earth  homes  in  the  midst  of  limitless  space;  how  to 
contrive  that  somewhere  in  the  eaves  of  the  temple 
of  eternity  the  spaiTow  should  find  a  house  and  the 
swallow  a  nest  where  she  might  lay  her  young;  how 
to  make  material  globes  out  of  pui*e  invisible  space, 
— that  was  the  problem;  and  that  problem  has  been 
solved. 

Wisdom  is  that  which  conceives  some  mighty 
plan,  in  order  to  achieve  some  great  object.  The 
wisdom  is  shown  in  the  perfect  adaptation  of  the 
plan  to  the  fulfilment  of  the  object.  Make  no  mis- 
take here.  Be  sure  you  are  thinking  all  wrong,  if 
ever  you  attribute  to  yourself  a  power  that  the  great 
universe  has  not.  You  yourself  have  some  capacity 
to  plan,  have  some  power  to  adapt  moans  to  ends. 
"What  a  surprising  little  person  you  would  be  if  the 
whole  galaxy -were  to  stand  astonished  at  the  new 
revelation  you  made  to  it;  no  such  thing  had  ever 
been  seen  before!  It  is  true  that  God's  plan  in 
creation  has  not  been  understood ;  and  it  is  sadly  true 
that  most  men  seem  to  have  lavished  so  much  rev- 
erence on  an  unreal  plan  of  creation  that  they  seem 
to  have  none  left  for  the  real  one.  The  old  idea 
was  that  God  made  stars,  suns,  earths,  plants,  ani- 


50  The  Fullness  of  God. 

mals,  and  men  out  of  nothing,  just  as  they  are.  This 
thought  has  vanished  to  return  no  more,  but  only 
to  give  place  to  the  thought  of  a  plan  immeasurably 
vaster,  more  inconceivably  wonderful.  You  have  to 
conceive  that,  before  ever  the  atoms  were,  the 
thought  of  God  planned  out  the  whole  creation;  and 
that,  out  of  His  own  being.  He  willed  that  the  in- 
numerable atoms  which  form  the  visible  universe 
should  proceed,  and  that  each  and  all,  in  perfect 
proportions,  should  join  together  to  build  the  mighty 
whole ;  and  that  eveiything  thus  planned  and  created 
was  seen,  from  the  very  beginning,  to  be  very  good; 
and  that,  from  that  infinitely  remote  instant,  no  sin- 
gle atom  has  ever  changed  in  size  or  in  velocity  of 
interior  motion;  that  the  proportions  of  each, 
thought  out  beforehand,  have  been  absolutely  kept, 
and  that  the  result  of  this  inconceivable  dance  of 
matter  has  been,  and  will  forever  be,  good;  and  that 
each  combination  is  the  best  possible,  in  order  to 
reach  the  result  aimed  at.  The  thought  of  oxygen 
and  hydrogen  combining  to  form  water  is  an  abso- 
lutely perfect  thought,  and  will  forever  produce 
good.  This  is  equally  true  of  each  one  of  the  im- 
mense series.  Silicon,  nitrogen,  and  carbon  spring 
from  a  divinely  perfect  thought, — a  thought  that 
has  resulted  in  divinely  perfect  action;  while  each 
one  of  their  combinations  with  the  other  elements, 
and  each  of  their  relations  to  the  perfect  whole,  are 
equally  perfect.  Granted  the  atoms  and  their  spin, 
granted  the  pressure  of  God's  presence  everywhere, 
and  you  can  predict  the  galaxy.  Grant  free  motion 


The  Fullness  of  God.  51 

of  finite  spirit  within  infinite  Spirit,  and  you  have 
free  souls  peopling  that  galaxy. 

You  are  shut  up,  I  say,  to  the  conclusion  that, 
l>efore  ever  the  worlds  and  atoms  were,  the  thought 
of  God  measured  size,  shape,  and  velocity  of  spin 
of  every  atom,  and  also  fitted  each  sot  of  atoms  to 
every  other  before  He  made  them,  unless  you  are 
ready  to  maintain  that  from  all  eternity,  in  a  given 
inch,  ton  thousand  trillions  of  little,  self-existent 
eternal  oxygen  gods  found  themselves,  to  their  sur- 
prise, all  exactly  alike,  and  agreed,  as  it  were,  to 
act  together;  and  then,  still  more  to  their  sui-prise, 
became  aware  that  there  were  iu  the  self-sameinch 
twenty  thousand  trillions  of  little,  self-existent, 
eternal  hydrogen  gods,  all  exactly  like  each  other, 
and  all  precisely  fitted  to  join  together  with  half 
their  number  of  oxygen  gods  or  goddesses,  as  the 
case  mi;^'ht  be,  and  so  on  and  so  on,  to  the  end  of 
the  ridiculous  chapter.  If  you  back  out  and  shel- 
ter yourself  ia  mystery,  and  say  that  the  mystery 
of  self-existent  atoms  is  no  greater  than  the  mys- 
tery of  creation,  then  I  answer,  One  tremendous 
mystery  in  one  universe  is  immeasurably  more  prob- 
able than  a  series  of  little  petty  mysteries,  whose 
number  could  not  be  put  down,  if  you  filled  the 
whole  orbit  of  Neptune  with  figures  so  small  that 
you  would  have  to  use  a  microscope  to  see  them. 

Forever  the  atom  sings  its  tiny  song  in  the  ears 
of  God, — a  song  of  perfect,  infinite  content;  for  it 
knows  that  it  and  its  Maker  are  alike  perfect.  To 
all  eternity,  it  fulfils  His  will  with  absolutely  un- 


52  The  Fullness  of  God. 

questioning  obedience.  Now  floating  in  the  sun- 
light, now  imprisoned  in  the  petal  of  a  flower,  now 
hidden  for  seeming  eternal  ages  in  the  darkness  of 
the  mine  or  entombed  in  the  awful  splendor  of  the 
central  fires;  now  throbbing  with  the  sun's  incon- 
ceivable heat,  now  chilled  by  the  bitter  cold  of  in- 
terstellar space, — always  and  everywhere,  with  equal 
and  unchanged  joy,  it  fills  its  tiny  but  essential 
place  in  the  unfathomable  creation  of  God.  It 
cannot  "  serve  Him  much  " ;  but  it  can  serve  Him 
forever,  and  can  "please  Him  perfectly." 

"  Would'st  thou  the  highest  life  know,  the 'atom'  can 

whisper  its  secret. 
What  that  is  without  will,  that  be  thou,  man,  with  a  will." 

VII.  The  love  of  God  is  infinite,  and  is  coexten- 
sive with  space  and  all  the  other  attributes  of  God. 

"  Tell  me  a  man's  riiling  love,"  said  Swedenborg, 
"and  I  will  tell  you  what  he  is."  Equally  true  is 
this,  "  Give  me  the  sum  total  of  a  man's  actions, 
and  I  will  find  out  from  them  his  lailing  love."  Let 
us  then  judge  God  by  His  acts.  Whose  are  the 
iron  and  the  stone?  Whose  are  the  cattle  on  a 
thousand  hills  ?  For  whom  do  waves  sparkle,  winds 
blow,  leaves  rustle  ?  and  for  whom  does  earth  pour 
forth  her  fruit  ?  Is  it  for  the  sake  of  God  that  the 
sun  shines,  that  the  moon  lights  up  the  night  ?  Has 
He  built  the  stars  for  His  habitation,  and  do  their 
light-waves  caiTy  messages  to  Him  ?  Does  gravi- 
tation keep  His  house  together  over  His  head? 
AVTiat,  then,  is  all  this  creation  for  ?  Whose  wants 
does  it  meet  ?     Whose  intellect  does  it  stimulate  ? 


The  Fullness  of  Ood.  53 

Whose  life  does  it  create,  protect,  aud  glorify? 
There  is  but  one  inevitable  answer.  The  whole 
galaxy  is  built,  gravitation  pulls,  light  shines,  elec- 
tricity thi'ills,  and  the  atoms  cohere  to  form  the 
worlds,  simply  and  solely  for  the  benefit  of  God's 
children.  The  whole  cosmos  is  one  mighty  token 
of  His  love. 

It  is  strange  to  hear  a  man  like  Tyndall  speak  of 
what  seems  the  "  appalling  indifference  "  of  nature 
to  the  woes  of  man,  as  if  nature  were  one  thing  and 
man  another,  and  they  existed  in  two  different  uni- 
verses, made  by  two  different  beings,  for  two  differ- 
ent purposes,  the  truth  being  that  this  seeming 
indifference  is  the  crowning  triumph  of  the  love 
divine.  It  means  that  in  matter  God  has  subjected 
Himself  to  man,  that  in  matter  God  takes  upon 
Himself  the  form  of  a  servant,  that  in  matter  God 
is  absolutely  obedient  to  the  dictates  of  His  crea- 
tures. Keep  the  laws  of  matter,  and  you  can  shape 
it  to  what  moulds  you  please.  Meekly  it  will  un- 
dergo all  the  blows  wherewith  you  fashion  it.  With 
fire-beat  and  hammer-beat,  you  weld  it  to  your  will. 
In  every  mighty  workshop  of  the  modern  day  there 
is  many  a  Jacob  who  will  suddenly  awake  from  his 
dream  and  say,  "  God  was  in  this  place,  and  I  knew 
it  not."  In  matter,  man  is  the  master,  and  God  the 
servant;  man  proposes,  and  disposes  also.  In  mat- 
ter, God  abdicates  realm  after  realm  of  His  king- 
dom, in  order  that  His  childi'en  may  have  a  kingdom 
too.  But  it  is  more  than  this.  God  has  only  His 
own  substance  out  of  which  to  make  this  kingdom. 


54  The  Fullness  of  God. 

In  matter,  God,  by  a  divine  act  of  transubstantia- 
tion,  forever  saith,  "Take,  eat:  this  is  my  body 
which  is  given  for  you!  " 

But  you  say,  "Now,  you  yourself  are  limiting 
the  power  of  God."  Nay:  it  is  God  Himself  who 
is  limiting  His  own  power. 

We  do  not  understand  in  the  least  the  perfection 
of  God's  self-surrender  until  we  know  that  it  is  ab- 
solute. 

God  has  given  his  worlds  away,  and  cannot  take 
them  back  again.  He  has  given  to  us.  His  children, 
real  eminent  domain,  over  the  things  He  has  made. 

God  has  reserved  to  Himself  absolutely  nothing 
of  the  galaxy.  All  is  now  the  absolute  property  of 
His  children.  He  has  only  reserved  to  Himself  the 
right  to  protect,  to  guide,  to  ransom,  to  rescue,  to 
forgive,  the  right  in  all  their  affliction  to  be  afflicted, 
the  right  to  comfort  and  cheer  and  strengthen,  and 
the  right  to  protect  the  weak  against  the  strong  and 
to  visit  the  one  who  wrongs  his  neighbor. 

Jesus  did  not  invent  self-sacrifice.  He  discov- 
ered it, — discovered  that  self-sacrifice  is  the  great 
central  law  of  the  universe,  that  this  is  the  heart  of 
God.  He  obeyed  it,  loved  it,  lived  it,  and  gave 
himself  for  it. 

God  is  love.  This  is  the  gospel,  the  good  tidings 
which  proclaim  liberty  to  all  captives  and  comfort 
all  that  mourn.  It  is  the  good  news  to  all,  to  the 
weak  as  well  as  to  the  strong.     God  is  love. 

Here  is  a  poor,  lonely,  forlorn  old  woman,  living 
all  by  herself  in   some  crazy  attic  in  a  tenement 


The  Fullness  of  God.  55 

house.  Husband,  children,  friends,  are  all  dead  and 
gone.  It  is  night.  The  weary  toil  of  the  day,  too 
much  for  the  feeble  frame,  is  over  at  last;  and  now 
the  one  romance  of  her  desolate  life  begins. 

By  the  light  of  her  one  tallow  candle,  she  opens 
her  well-thumbed  Bible  at  the  passage  which  tells 
of  that  rest  which  remaineth  for  the  people  of  God, 
of  that  better,  that  heavenly  country,  where  her  dead 
are  alive  to  God.  Unconsciously,  she  is  trying  a 
great  experiment.  In  this  miserable  room  is  there 
anything  besides  rickety  floor,  falling  plaster,  crazy 
stove,  and  single  chair,  and  table  and  empty  space 
around  ? 

Yes;  there  is.  She  reads  on,  and  the  loved  faces 
seem  to  smile  once  more  upon  her,  and  the  loneli- 
ness departs ;  for  the  Love  Eternal  which  surrounds 
her  makes  her  sleep  once  more  in  safety. 

She  dies;  and  the  beloved  ones  meet  her,  and  lead 
her  toward  the  great  company  of  "  loyal  hearts  and 
true,"  that  she  may  hear  the  life-song  of  the  re- 
deemed. It  fills  her  soul  with  joy  at  first.  But 
very  timidly,  after  a  time,  she  asks  if  ever  she  may 
be  possibly  allowed  just  to  catch  a  far-off  glimpse 
of  that  third  heaven  she  has  read  of,  where  God 
Himself  is  moon  and  stm.  Oh,  yes !  they  will  take 
her  at  once.  Swiftly,  they  cany  her  to  that  blest 
place.  But  where  is  she  ?  ^^  hy,  she  is  standing 
in  the  old  rickety  attic.  This  is  the  very  stove, 
these  the  tumble-down  walls.  Here  is  each  com- 
mon thing  that  her  past  life  wearied  of  so  often. 
But,  lo !  wall  and  stove,  chair  and  table,  begin  to 


56  The  Fullness  of  God. 

shine,  to  grow  transparent,  to  become  part  and  par- 
cel of  the  Love  Divine,  all  love  excelling.  She  has 
seen  God,  seen  the  fulness  of  Him  that  filleth  all 
things. 

One  day,  it  shall  be  thus  with  us  all — 

"  Soon  the  whole, 
Like  a  jDarted  scroll, 
Shall  before  my  amazed  sight  uproll, 
And  then  be  seen, 
In  unclouded  sheen, 
The  Presence  wherein  I  have  ever  been." 


THE    DIVINE  UNITY. 

HENRT    M.   SIMMONS. 

The  idea  of  Divine  Unity  is  found  in  various 
stages  of  growth  in  the  Bible.  The  Israelites  long 
served  many  gods  and  believed  in  more,  and  even 
so  late  and  honored  a  sage  as  Solomon  worshiped 
five.  But  this  polytheism  passed,  and  the  saying 
ran:  "Hear,  O  Israel,  the  Lord  our  God  is  one 
Lord," — or  as  better  translated,  "  Jehovah  is  our 
God,  Jehovah  alone."  He  came  also  at  length  to 
be  thought  not  merely  God  of  Israel,  but  of  all 
nations  and  nature;  and  the  Deuteronomist  says 
that  to  him  "belongeth  the  heaven  and  the  heaven 
of  heavens,  the  earth  with  all  that  is  therein."  Nor 
was  Jehovah's  rule  shared  yet  by  any  Satan.  The 
author  of  the  later  Isaiah  ascribes  to  him  all  bad  as 
well  as  good,  and  makes  him  claim  to  "  create  evil " 
and  "do  all  these  things,"  "there  is  none  else." 
The  diverse  gods  were  united  at  last;  and  Zecha- 
riah,  predicting  the  time  when  Jehovah  should  be 
seen  as  "king over  all  the  earth,"  said,  "The  Lord 
shall  be  one,  and  his  name  one." 

But  now  and  then  some  seer  declared  the  Unity 
of  God  better; — not  that  of  a  ruler  throned  above, 
using  earth  for  footstool  and  counting  nations  noth- 
ing, but  that  of  one  guardian  presence  in  all,  and 
even  one  with  all.  "Do  I  not  fill  heaven  and 
earth?"  he  says  in  Jeremiah;  and  another  declares 

57 


58  The  Divine   Unity. 

that  "  the  heaven  and  heaven  of  heavens  cannot  con- 
tain him."  The  familiar  psalm  finds  him  in  "  the  ut- 
termost parts  of  the  sea,"  in  morning  light  and  mid- 
night darkness,  in  heaven  and  hell  alike.  So  the 
Christian  apostle  tells  even  idolatrous  Athenians 
that  this  God  is  with  them,  for  in  him  they  live  and 
have  their  being.  Not  only  were  all  in  him,  but  he 
in  all;  and  Paul  asks  the  carnal  and  corrupt  Corin- 
thians, if  they  did  not  know  that  they  were  the 
"temple  of  God?"  Nor  did  Deity  dwell  in  men 
merely  as  his  shrines,  but  as  his  sons,  and  so  still 
more  closely  one  with  them.  The  Jews  of  Jesus' 
day  were  wont  to  call  him  "  oui'  Father  " ;  the  apos- 
tle told  the  heathen  Greeks  that  God  was  their 
Father  too ;  and  the  epistle  to  the  Ephesians  calls 
him  "  Father  of  all,  over  all  and  through  all  and  in 
all."  And  these  writers,  as  well  as  Jesus,  often  call 
men  "  Sons  of  God." 

In  such  sayings  we  reach  a  higher  idea  of 
unity.  God  was  not  merely  one  personal  will  apart 
from  the  world;  but  a  diviner  One,  including  the 
world  and  pervading  all  things  in  it,  uniting  all  in 
his  infinite  life.  He  was  not  merely  one  in  himself, 
bat  one  with  men,  and  so  calling  them  to  be  one 
with  each  other.  The  Divine  Unity  included,  as 
its  best  earthly  meaning,  the  human  unity. 

Hence  with  the  growth  of  the  idea,  religion  more 
and  more  regarded  the  unity  of  men.  The  belief 
in  one  Lord  of  all  nations  rebuked  the  old  wars 
fought  in  the  name  of  rival  gods;  and  the  sanguine 
monotheistic   prophets   pictured   the  coming   day 


The  Divine   Unity.  59 

when  the  world  would  beat  its  weapons  into  plow- 
shares, and  "  not  learn  war  any  more."  These 
prophets  made  even  religion  consist  chiefly  of  hu- 
manity. Hosea  says  the 'Lord  wants  mercy  and 
not  sacrifice;  Amos  asserts  that  the  maker  of  the 
Pleiades  and  Orion  has  no  delight  in  their  solemn 
assemblies  or  psalms,  and  only  asks  for  justice; 
Isaiah  makes  light  of  their  sabbaths  and  ceremonies 
and  prayers,  and  bids  them  rather  "relieve  the 
oppressed " ;  and  Micah  says  the  Lord  requires 
nothing  of  them  but  "to  do  justly,  and  love  mercy, 
and  walk  humbly  with  him."  Later  teachers  made 
religion  look  still  more  manward.  Rabbi  Hillel 
said  the  Golden  Rule  was  the  sum  of  the  Old  Tes- 
tament law;  and  Jesus  afterward  said  it  was  "the 
law  and  the  prophets"  too. 

Indeed  Jesus  left  little  of  the  old  religion  except 
this  human  love  and  spirit  of  unity  among  men. 
He  broke  the  Sabbath,  they  said;  he  compared  their 
religious  fasts  and  similar  ceremonies  to  old  bottles 
about  to  burst,  and  old  clothes  past  patching;  he 
commanded  them  to  leave  the  very  altar  until  they 
were  reconciled  to  others, — as  if  peace  were  more 
important  than  praying.  In  fact  he  put  peace  at 
the  head  of  religious  duties,  and  gave  to  mere 
peace-makers  his  best  blessing,  and  the  highest 
name  of  "sons  of  God."  He  preached  peace  even 
to  the  degree  of  overlooking  evil.  He  cited  the 
sunshine  and  rain  falling  on  good  and  evil  alike,  as 
sign  that  God  was  perfect,  and  bade  men  be  as  per- 
fect; and  he  was  himself  so  true  to  the  teaching,  that 


60  The  Divine  Unity. 

Kenan  says  Jesus  had  a  divine  incapacity  of  seeing 
evil.  In  this  spirit  lie  forgave  his  very  murderers, 
preached  love  even  to  enemies,  and  made  religion 
consist  chiefly  of  the  feelings  that  unite  men. 

The  same  thought  prevails  in  the  apostles  also. 
They  did  indeed  add  some  doctrines  about  Jesus, 
which  would  have  surprised  him  and  may  not  satisfy 
us.  But  if  we  overlook  these,  we  find  their  emphasis 
ever  on  peace  and  love.  Paul  exhorts  the  Thessa- 
loniansto  "abound  in  love  toward  one  another  and 
toward  all  men";  he  urges  the  Romans  to  "  be  at 
peace  with  all  men,"  and  says  that  "  love  is  the  ful- 
filling of  the  law."  He  rebukes  the  Corinthians  for 
their  divisions,  and  preaches  to  them  a  charity  as 
broad  as  Jesus'  incapacity  of  seeing  evil ; — says  that 
charity  "thinketh  no  evil,"  or,  in  the  new  version, 
"taketh  no  account  of  evil."  And  this  charity  he 
puts  above  everything  else ; — above  prophecy,  which 
"  shall  be  done  away" ;  above  the  miracles  that  could 
"remove  mountains";  above  the  martyrdom  that 
gives  its  "  body  to  be  burned  " ;  above  even  faith  and 
hope,  "the  greatest  of  these  is  charity."  Other 
epistles  lay  equal  stress  upon  love  and  unity.  That 
to  the  Colossians  urges  them  to  forbear  and  forgive, 
and  "  above  all  these  things,  to  put  on  love,  which 
is  the  bond  of  perfectness."  That  to  the  Ephesians, 
which  teaches  so  grandly  the  Unity  of  God  "  through 
all  and  in  all,"  especially  emphasizes  the  unity  of 
men.  It  urges  them  to  "  keep  the  unity  of  the  spirit 
in  the  bond  of  peace,"  to  "walk  in  love"  and  "be 
rooted  and  grounded  in  love,"   and  in  their  very 


The  Divine   Unity.  61 

armor  to  be  shod  with  the  "gospel  of  peace."  It 
represents  Christ  as  a  tiniter  of  Hebrews  and 
heathen,  and  calls  him  "  our  peace,  who  hath  made 
both  one,  and  hath  broken  down  the  middle  wall  of 
partition."  Still  more  was  (Jod  seen  as  a  uniter, 
and  continually  called  the  "God  of  peace,"  and  "  the 
God  of  love  and  peace."  And  in  the  epistle  of 
John,  God  is  especially  identified  with  human  love. 
Every  one  that  loveth,  is  most  closely  one  with  God; 
for  "God  is  love,  and  he  that  dwelleth  in  love, 
dwelleth  in  God  and  God  in  him."  The  love  that 
unites  men  is  itself  God, 

Here  we  touch  the  deepest  truth  in  the  doctrine. 
God  is  not  only  One  in  all,  but  is  especially  what 
makes  all  one.  He  not  only  unites  all,  but  is  pecu- 
liarly the  uniting  principle.  God  is  the  infinite 
One,  living  in  every  thing;  but  living  most  in  hu- 
man love,  and  hence  worshiped  best  by  that. 

So  far  is  the  idea  carried  in  the  Bible.  Not  in- 
deed that  it  is  found  throughout  the  Bible,  for  it  is 
often  denied  there.  Still  less  is  it  found  in  the 
Bible  alone.  It  was  often  declared  by  Roman  and 
Greek  philosophers  long  before  Paul,  and  was 
familiar  in  the  higher  thought  of  Egypt  and  else- 
where before  the  Hebrews  were  heard  of.  Still  it 
was  VQYj  grandly  expressed  in  these  later  Jewish  and 
early  Christian  writings.  And  what  sentence  of  an- 
cient or  modern  literature  sums  religious  truth  with 
more  precision  and  perfection  than  that:  "If  we 
love  one  another,  God  dwelleth  in  us  "  f  The  most 
practical  precept,  the  most  perfect  theology,  the 


62  The  Divine  Unity. 

most  profound  pbilosopliy, — all    packed   in  eight 
Greek  words. 

But  this  truth  was  not  always  remembered  even 
by  the  apostles,  and  was  quite  forgotten  by  most  of 
their  successors.  A  school  of  Christians,  represented 
by  such  men  as  Clement  of  Alexandria  and  Origen, 
continued  to  teach  one  God  "  above  all  and  through 
all  and  in  all";  but  most  chose  a  narrower  thought, 
and  the  leading  idea  of  the  Church  became  not 
unity,  but  division.  Christianity  soon  taught  a 
divided  God,  and  hence  a  divided  humanity. 

This  division  came  chiefly  from  the  inherited  doc- 
trine of  a  devil.  For  long  before  the  apostles,  the 
higher  Hebrew  monotheism  had  been  modified  by 
Persian  dualism,  and  Jehovah's  kingdom  divided 
with  a  new  ruler  called  Satan.  Evil,  which  the 
great  prophet's  God  created  and  took  care  of,  was 
now  all  assigned  to  this  rival ;  and  inasmuch  as  evil 
generally  means  everything  except  the  little  which 
the  speaker  likes,  Satan's  share  was  much  the  larger. 
This  later  Jewish  doctrine  naturally  remained  in 
Christian  thought;  and  this  Satan,  who  is  men- 
tioned only  in  three  late  passages  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, and  there  only  as  a  sort  of  servant  of  God, 
often  appears  in  the  New  Testament  as  God's  foe,  and 
so  powerful  as  to  be  called  "  the  prince  of  the  world." 

This  division  was  not  only  thus  inevitable,  but 
was  in  a  sense  true.  The  Divine  Unity  does  in- 
clude a  duality  and  ever  works  with  opposing 
principles.     The  globe  is  moulded  and   its  orbit 


The  Divine   Unity.  63 

marked  out  by  two  contending  forces, — one  seeking 
to  centralize,  the  other  to  separate.  On  earth,  all 
advance,— from  gas  to  granite,  from  algae  to  elms, 
from  mollusks  to  man,  and  through  all  human  pro- 
gress,—  has  come  through  the  opposing  processes 
of  creation  and  destruction,  growth  and  decay. 
These  processes,  though  one  to  the  divine  view,  are 
distinct  to  the  human,  and  must  be  contrasted  as 
good  and  bad.  Man  naturally  personifies  too;  the 
ancient  Persian  saw  his  bad  as  Ahriman,  and  the 
Englishman  still  spells  his  evil  with  a  D,  until  he 
learns  better.  So  apostles,  in  the  manner  of  their 
times,  saw  evil  enough,  and  called  it  Satan,  the 
adversary ; — and  we  cannot  condemn  them  for  it. 
Rather  we  must  commend  some  of  them  for  sepa- 
rating good  and  evil  so  wisely,— not  by  the  super- 
ficial tests  common  in  religion,  but  by  the  deep 
distinction  of  love  and  hate,  unity  and  discord. 
Paul,  if  not  always  seeing  the  full  breadth  and 
depth  of  the  Divine  Unity,  still  saw  that  human 
unity  is  the  divinest  thing  on  earth.  His  evils  are 
"  enmities,  strife,  factions,  divisions  " ;  his  fruits  of 
the  spirit,  "love,  peace,  long-suffering,  gentleness, 
meekness."  Beneath  names,  his  evil  and  devil 
were  chiefly  what  divided  men;  his  good  and  God 
what  united  them.  All  would  have  been  well,  had 
the  church  kept  to  this  principle. 

But  the  Church  soon  began  to  separate  good  and 
evil  by  quite  another  line.  It  yielded  to  the  com- 
mon tendency,  and  judged  not  by  a  principle,  but 
by  a  name.     Its  good  ceased  to  mean  love,  and 


64  The  Divine   Unity. 

came  to  mean  only  what  took  the  name  of  Christ. 
Its  evil  ceased  to  mean  hate,  and  came  to  mean 
everything  -which  was  not  called  by  the  Christian 
name.  This  was  not  Jesus'  fault,  for  he  had  been 
far  too  noble  to  care  for  his  name.  Indeed  he 
rebuked  those  who  called  him  "  Lord,  Lord,"  and 
who  said  we  "  have  prophesied  in  thy  name,  and  in 
thy  name  cast  out  devils,  and  in  thy  name  done  " 
so  many  wonderful  things.  The  word  he  had  for 
those  people,  was  "  Depart  from  me,  ye  that  work 
iniquity;"  and  there  is  no  record  that  they  had 
worked  any  other  iniquity  than  relying  on  his 
name.  Possibly  Jesus  really  meant, — what  all 
history  has  proved, — that  reliance  on  names  in- 
stead of  principles  does  "work  iniquity"  of  the 
worst  kind.  At  any  rate,  he  told  them  not  to  use 
his  name  as  a  test.  But  they  did, — and  soon  made 
an  end  of  charity  by  it.  Even  that  epistle  which 
says  God  dwells  in  all  who  love  each  other,  teaches 
that  he  dwells  only  in  the  little  Church  though, 
and  says:  "  We  know  that  we  are  of  God,  and  the 
whole  world  lieth  in  the  evil  one."  Such  thoughts 
grew  more  common,  until  the  apostle's  Christ,  who 
was  a  uniter  and  had  "broken  down  the  wall  of 
partition,"  became  a  divider,  and  built  a  worse  wall 
than  the  old  one.  By  his  name,  the  Church  walled 
off  the  heathen  and  even  the  Hebrews,  walled  off 
most  of  mankind  as  cursed,  and  not  only  divided 
God's  kingdom,  but  gave  nearly  all  of  it  to  that 
Satan  of  whom  the  Old  Testament  prophets  did  not 
so  much  as  know  the  existence. 


The  Divine   Unity.  65 

Nor  did  the  divisiou  stop  here,  but  divided  the 
little  that  was  left.  This  partial  God  was  made  a 
trinity  of  persons;  and,  far  worse,  the  Church  was 
divided  and  redivided  over  this  and  other  theolog- 
ical questions.  The  partitions  multiplied,  and 
Christendom  was  separated  by  dogmas  into  more 
sects  than  can  be  catalogued  in  a  sermon.  It 
was  divided  even  by  the  ceremonies  which  Jesus 
compared  to  old  clothes.  That  fasting  which  he 
rejected  gave  rise  to  endless  contentions  how  it 
should  be  kept,  and  came  to  be  thought  so  religious 
that  we  read  of  the  Russian  robber  who  killed  a 
traveler,  but  would  not  eat  the  meat  found  in  the 
cart  because  it  was  fast- day.  Instead  of  leaving 
the  altar  until  they  were  reconciled,  Christians 
quarreled  past  reconciliation  about  the  acts  and 
attitudes  at  the  altar.  Baptism  became  more  im- 
portant than  purity,  and  an  atonement  for  impur- 
ity; and  dispiTtes  about  it  sometimes  ended  in  a 
baptism  of  blood.  Paul,  rebuking  the  Corinthians 
for  their  contentions,  says  he  does  "thank  God" 
that  he  baptized  so  few  of  them; — and  well  he 
might,  considering  how  such  rites  have  called 
attention  away  from  that  love  which  Jesus  and 
Paul  made  the  one  thing  needful  in  religion.  This 
was  so  often  neglected  that  Tennyson  says  : 

"  Christian  lore  among  the  churches  looked  the  twin  of 
heathen  hate." 

Unity  was  forgotten,  and  in  consequence  Jesus' 
teachings  were  reversed  to  a  degree  that  would  be 
laughable,  if  not  so  lamentable.     Renouncing  his 


66  The  Divine   Unity. 


5> 


saying  that  all  peace-makers  were  "  sons  of  God, 
his  worshipers  made  war  on  those  who  would  not 
deny  it  by  calling  him  the  only  son  of  God.  Re- 
versing his  charge  to  forgive  "  them  which  despite- 
fully  use  you  and  persecute  you,"  Christianity 
despitefully  used  its  own  another,  and  persecuted 
the  very  nation  that  furnished  its  Scriptures  and 
Messiah.  The  gospel  of  brotherhood  was  preached 
by  bloodshed.  The  dying  knight,  when  told  that 
he  must  forgive  his  enemies,  said  he  had  none? 
he  had  killed  them  all;  and  to  Jesus'  command  to 
love  its  enemies,  the  Church  could  sometimes  reply 
that  there  were  not  many  left.  Even  those  who 
were  not  enemies  did  not  always  escape;  and  the 
command,  "  Love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself,"  was 
sometimes  translated,  "  Burn  your  neighbor,  if  he 
does  not  believe  like  you."  So  many  and  great 
evils  came  from  that  error  of  division.  Recogni- 
tion of  the  Divine  Unity,  and  its  corollaiy  of  human 
unity,  would  have  prevented  every  one,  and  saved 
history  from  half  its  horrors. 

But  that  forgotten  truth  at  length  began  to  re- 
assert itself.  The  Unity  of  God  was  again  de- 
clared, and  the  name  Unitarian  arose  as  opposed  to 
Trinitarian.  But,  of  far  more  importance,  its  in- 
volved principle  of  human  unity  began  to  be  seen 
by  men  of  all  sects.  It  was  seen  that  brothers 
ought  not  to  be  divided  by  mere  ceremonies,  and 
that  there  was  "  one  God  and  Father  cf  all  '  who 
kept  their  doctrines  correct.     With  more  advance 


The  Divine  Unity.  67 

it  was  felt  that  men  ought  not  to  be  divided  by- 
minor  differences  of  doctrine,  and  that  there  was 
"one  God  over  all"  Christians.     So  peace  grew 
between  the  most  divergent  Christian  sects.      Even 
Trinitarians  and  Unitarians  united  as  far  as  was 
proper;  and  Lowell  pictures  Calvin  and  Servetus 
meeting  "at  one  board,"  to  enjoy  a  "milder  roast," 
"And  o'er  their  claret  settle  Comte  unread." 
And  when  read,  even  Comte,  and  countless  others 
not  called  Christians,  prove  to  be  as  true  to  Christ 
as  is  the  Church, — and  often  truer.     Take,  for  in- 
stance, that  peace-??iaA;ingr  which  Jesus  put  first  as 
sign  of  very  "sons  of  God."     Christian  nations,  in 
scorn  of  that  sentiment,  have  made  history  a  record 
of  wars ;  and  it  is  said  that  even  now  American 
farmers  and  merchants  would  not  seriously  object 
to  a  foreign  campaign  which  should  destroy  half  a 
million  men,  if  it  would  raise  the  price  of  wheat  a 
few  cents.     Nor  has  the  Church   condemned  the 
custom  very  severely.     With  war  murdering  five 
millions  of  men  the   last   century,  and   mangling 
more,  and  breeding  brutal   sentiments  to   last   a 
century  to  come, — an  English  writer  says   that  in 
fifty  years'  attendance  at  church,  he  has  heard  only 
one  sermon  against  it.     Francis  A.  Walker  makes 
a  similar  charge   against  the   preaching  of  this 
country,  and  calls  our  clergy  "  the  most  demoral- 
ized body  in  the  community  in  this  respect."     But 
heretics,  from  Voltaire  since,  have  been  preaching 
against   this   evil.     The  recent  wars   of   England, 
while  supported  by  nearly  all  her  established  clergy, 


68  The  Divine   Unity. 

have  been  actively  opposed  by  positivists  and  ag- 
nostics, like  Frederick  Harrison  and  John  Morley. 
Herbert  Spencer rebnkes  "the  ten  thousand  priests 
of  the  religion  of  love,  who  are  silent  when  the  na- 
tion is  moved  by  the  religion  of  hate ;"  and  one 
said  that  Bradlaugh,  the  atheist,  ought  to  be  made 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  since  he  was  so  good  an 
advocate  of  Jesus'  religion  of  peace,  while  the  oc- 
cupant of  that  see  was  false  to  it.  The  Christian 
name  is  evidently  a  poor  religious  test. 

With  wider  knowledge,  even  the  heathen  beyond 
the  influence  of  Christianity  and  before  it,  prove  to 
have  had  a  quite  similar  religion.  That  Golden 
Rule  which  Jesus  said  summed  "the  law  and  the 
prophets,"  appears  in  the  ancient  literature  of  China 
and  elsewhere  so  common  that  Christians  have  al- 
most ceased  to  regret  it;  and  the  Chinaman  seems 
to  live  up  to  it  as  well  as  the  American  believers 
who  set  fire  to  his  house  and  shoot  him.  Our  hos- 
tility to  the  heathen  was  partly  ignorance.  Charles 
Lamb,  when  asked  how  he  could  say  that  he  hated 
a  certain  man  whom  he  did  not  even  know,  replied: 
"  How  could  I  hate  him  if  I  did  know  him  ?  "  Our 
hate  of  the  heathen  softens  as  we  know  them  better. 
Travelers  tell  of  their  virtues ;  and  recent  writers 
have  been  praising  the  moral  progress  made  under 
Mohammedanism  in  Africa,  where  the  advance  of 
European  civilization  is  marked  chiefly  by  gin-bot- 
tles. Even  missionaries  admit  the  heathen  merits; 
and,  according  to  the  New  York  Tribune,  Dr.  Scud- 
der  said  that  "  for  unmixed  wickedness  and  utter 


The  Divine  Unity.  69 

moral  depravity,  no  city  of  Asia  could  equal  Chi- 
cago." lu  ortler  to  keep  the  "missionary  nerve" 
uncut,  it  is  still  taught  that  Chicago  is  going  to 
paradise  and  Calcutta  to  the  pit, — and  without  pro- 
bation; but  the  humaner  missionaries  wince  under 
this  gospel,  and  inwardly  wish  that  the  divine  de- 
crees might  have  been  more  just. 

Men  prove  alike  the  world  over,  and  their  re- 
ligions much  alike.  When  Conway  said  he  was 
studying  the  Scriptures  Thoreau  asked,  "Which 
Scriptures?"  there  were  so  many.  The  Christian 
has  a  grand  Bible;  but  he  cannot  read  it  much 
without  wishing  that  he  might  exchange  a  part  of 
it  for  heathen  literature.  Human  brotherhood  was 
nobly  taught  in  the  early  Church;  but  was  also 
taught  the  century  before  by  pagan  Cicero  "  as  dis- 
tinctly," Lecky  says.  The  divine  Fatherhood  was 
well  declared  by  the  apostles;  but  when  one  of 
them  preached  it  to  the  Athenians,  he  took  his  text 
from  one  of  their  own  pagan  poets;  and  the  faith 
was  already  fossilized  long  before  in  the  heathen 
name,  Jupiter,  the  Heaven- Father.  Duty  to  man 
and  faith  in  God  are  taught  little  better  in  the  av- 
erage pulpit  to-day,  than  in  that  old  Egyptian 
Prisse  papyrus,  whose  very  ink  is  supposed  to  have 
been  dried  centui'ies  before  Moses.  Revelation  is 
the  monopoly  of  no  one  religion,  and  the  wise  men 
of  all  faiths  have  often  united  in  this  confession. 
Says  the  old  Chinese  apothegm:  "The  broad- 
minded  man  regards  all  religions  as  embodying  the 
same  truths."     Says  the  Persian  sentence:     "To 


70  The  Divine  Unity. 

him  wiio  has  risen  to  the  throne  of  the  Highest,  all 
religions  are  alike;  Christians,  Jews,  Guebres,  Mos- 
lems, all  adore  him  in  their  several  ways."  And  otir 
own  poet  sings  that  in  the  love  and  self-sacrifice  of 
all  ages, 

"  I  see  the  same  white  wings  outspread, 
That  hovered  o'er  the  master's  head;  " 

and  that  in  all  lands,  religious  truth  is  one,  and 

"  Whoso  hath  eyes  to  see,  may  see 
The  tokens  of  its  unity." 

And  not  only  in  the  diverse  religions  are  we  find- 
ing this  unity,  but  in  all  things.  History  comes 
back  from  its  study  of  states  and  institutions,  laws, 
legends,  literatures,  languages, — to  proclaim  that 
all  races  are  alike  and  all  mankind  one.  One  with 
the  animal  world  too, — adds  Anthropolog}",  tracing 
man  backward  almost  to  a  quadruped.  And  the 
whole  animal  world  is  one,  says  Zoology,  from  her 
researches  amid  blending  species  and  indistinguish- 
able cells.  The  vegetable  world  also  is  one,  replies 
Botany.  Aye,  and  both  together  are  one,  adds 
Biology,  unable  to  say  on  which  side  of  the  line  the 
lowest  forms  belong.  There  is  no  line,  but  the 
whole  organic  world  is  one.  One  with  the  inor- 
ganic also,  continues  science,  seeing  the  old  wall 
between  them  dissolve  in  protoplasm.  All  earthly 
forms  are  one,  shaped  from  the  same  substances, 
and  by  the  same  forces.  All  these  forces  are  one 
too,  adds  Physics, — transmuting  motion,  heat,  light. 


The  Divine   Unity.  71 

electricity,  magnetism,  into  each  other,  and  getting 
all  fi'om  the  same  gravity  which  moulded  and 
moves  the  earth.  And  the  same  gravity  moves  all 
other  worlds,  unites  all  as  one,  and  seems  to  have 
made  all  out  of  one, — adds  Astronomy,  tracing  the 
same  orbits  and  elements  through  the  universe. 
Even  these  few  elements,  too,  into  which  Chem 
istry  dissolves  the  earth  and  the  stars,  are  suspected 
to  have  been  compounded  from  fewer,  and  to  have 
come  originally  from  one. 

Such  unity  have  earth's  diversities  disclosed. 
Grant  Allen,  in  his  recent  article  on  the  last  fifty 
years  of  science,  says  "its  key-note  has  been  the 
idea  of  unity."  This  note  of  science  is  religious 
too  J.  Addington  Symonds,  in  his  article  on  the 
progress  of  thought  in  the  same  period,  says: 
"  When  we  begin  to  regard  this  unity  with  eyes 
from  which  the  scales  of  Christian  antagonism 
have  fallen,  we  discover  that  we  cannot  think  of  it 
except  as  spiritual;"  and  that  science,  "while 
establishing  law,  has  prepared  the  way  for  the 
identification  of  law  with  God."  Science  has  only 
enlarged  the  old  thought,  and  shown  "  one  Father 
of  all "  substances  as  well  as  souls,  "  through  all 
and  in  all"  things.  Humanity  is  one,  life  one, 
forms  one,  forces  one,  the  universe  one, — and  all 
these  ones  united  in  that  infinite  One  we  call  God. 
Each  investigator  reports  as  the  deepest  truth  he 
has  found.  Unity;  all  join  to  chant  as  the  central 
truth  of  creation,  Unity;  and  religion  hears  it  as 
another  psalm  singing  more  sublimely  the  Unity  of 
God. 


72  The  Divine   Unity. 

In  this  highest  Unity,  even  good  and  evil  become 
reconciled.  Deepest  thought  sees  no  more  room 
for  devil  than  did  the  great  prophet ;  but  its  God, 
like  his,  says,  "  I  create  evil,  there  is  none  else." 
Evil  is  not  Satanic  to  an  infinite  view.  Disease, 
death,  decay,  destruction,  and  all  physical  losses, 
come  from  laws  that  guard  life,  and  are  ever  ad- 
vancing it.  They  are  bad  only  to  the  narrow  out- 
look. Man,  getting  a  moment's  glimpse  of  eternity 
and  infinity  through  the  pinhole  of  his  present 
personality,  sees  what  seem  evil  and  good.  But  to 
the  infinite  eye  these  are  but  the  ebb  and  flow  of 
the  eternal  tide;  the  completed  swing  of  the  pen- 
dulum of  progress ;  the  falling  and  unfolding  leaves 
on  the  tree  of  life;  the  go  and  come  of  the  beating 
pulse  and  warming  breath  of  love. 

Moral  evils  also  lessen  to  the  larger  view.  Suf- 
fering and  sorrow  ripen  the  soul  until  it  counts 
them  gain.  Passions  are  the  foundation  of  prin- 
ciples, and  struggle  against  them  brings  strength. 
Sacrifice  begins  in  selfishness,  even  love  began 
with  lust,  and  the  worst  vices  have  virtues  waiting 
beneath  them.  Evils  are  the  lower  steps  in  the 
ascent  of  the  soul  and  of  society.  Each  person  or 
class  or  religion,  looking  up  and  down  the  ladder, 
divides  it  into  good  above  and  bad  below.  But  the 
rung  which  each  has  beneath  the  feet  as  bad,  some 
other  is  looking  up  toward  as  good, — and  the  evil 
is  only  relative.  It  is  not  even  real  to  the  infinite 
vision,  which  sees  the  ladder  undivided,  and  good 
and  evil  one. 


The  Divine  Unity.  73 

On  this  thought  religion  rises  to  that  divine  for- 
giveness which  Jesus  showed.     It  sees  bow  often 
the  worst  acta  come  from  ignorance; — just  as  he 
forgave  his  murderers,  "  for  they  know  not  what  they 
do."     It  attains  to  that  divine  impartiality  which 
Jesus  praised  in  the  sun;  and  seeks,  like  that,  to 
shed  heavenly  light  and  warmth  on  good  and  evil 
without  distinction.     It  rises  to  that  charity  which 
Paul  says  "  taketh  no  account  of  evil."     The  high- 
est religion  will  take  "no  account  of  evil";  but 
ceasing  to  abuse  that,  will  seek  rather  to  strengthen 
good,  which  is  the  best  cure  of  bad.     Keligion  will 
at  last  learn,  as  the  wisest  men  of  all  faiths  have 
taught,  to  return  good  for  evil  and  love  for  hate. 
Leaving  all  bitterness,  it  will  aim  to  unite  men,  and 
oppose  only  what  divides  them.     Not   that  even 
divisions  are  always  evil,  but  religion  has  better 
work  than  aiding  them.     In  the  secular  field  we 
must  have  strife; — the  rivalry  of  business  men,  the 
contention  of    political  parties,  the   fiery   zeal  of 
reformers  seeing  only  their  side.     This  strife  is  a 
necessary  element  of  progress.     But  it  is  the  secu- 
lar element.     Six  days  of  it  are  enough.     On  the 
sacred  seventh,  strife  should  cease;    and -religion, 
recalling  us  from  our  divisions,  should  try  to  re- 
unite us  by  this  deeper  truth  of  Unity.     Let  parti- 
sans proclaim  their  dividing  principles,  let  moral- 
ists contend  over  good  and  evil,  let  sects  dispute  as 
they  may  desire; — but  let  religion  preach  its  diviner 
gospel  of  peace  and  love.     The  priest's  should  be 
like  "The  Poet's  Creed": 


74  The  Divine   Unity. 

"  I  am  in  love  with  Love, 
And  the  sole  thing  I  hate  is  hate  ; 
For  hate  is  the  unpardonable  sin, 
And  Love  the  Holy  Ghost  within." 

This  truth  of  Divine  Unity  is  the  central  and 
saving  doctrine  of  religion.  But  it  must  be  made 
far  larger  and  deeper  than  that  denial  of  the  Trinity 
with  which  many  have  confounded  it.  Indeed  the 
trinity  was  true  enough, — what  there  was  of  it, — 
and  did  not  need  denial,  but  extension.  Warner's 
wise  guide  in  the  Adirondacks,  hearing  Sunday- 
school  teachers  discuss  the  Trinity,  said  "  they  had 
better  call  it  Legion " ;  and  we  need  to  see  not 
merely  *'  three  in  one,"  but  infinity  in  one,  and  all 
things  as  the  "diversities  of  operations"  of  the 
"  God  which  worketh  all  in  all."  We  need  still  to 
teach  a  "Father  and  Son  and  Holy  Spirit "; — only 
we  should,  like  Jesus,  see  a  son  in  every  one  of  the 
millions  of  peace-makers  among  men,  and  the  Holy 
Spirit  in  every  upright  person  on  earth,  Christian 
and  heathen  alike. 

For  religion  is  so  divine  that  it  ought  not  to  be  lim- 
ited by  even  the  Christian  name.  Jesus  was  a  most 
noble  soul, — altogether  too  noble  to  wish  his  name 
used  to  narrow  the  thought  of  God  and  to  divide 
humanity ;  and  to  all  who  so  misuse  it,  he  would 
doubtless  still  say,  "Depart  from  me,  ye  that  work 
iniquity."  Whosoever  uses  the  name  of  Christ  as 
a  shibboleth,  only  shows  thereby  how  little  he  has 
of  the  spirit  of  Christ.  Christianity  has  been  the 
richest  province  in  the  kingdom  of  God  on  earth. 


The  Divine  Unity.  75 

But  in  that  vast  kingdom,  embracing  so  many  re- 
ligions and  races  and  millennia,  it  is  only  a  province, 
— and  the  Christian  name  only  a  provincialism.  In 
the  living  language  of  the  eternal  religion  of  God, 
this  name,  except  as  a  noble  historic  term,  will  yet 
become  as  obsolete  as  Jesus  seems  to  have  ordered; 
and  religion  will  be  referred  to  that  divine  and  uni- 
versal sentiment  of  the  soul,  which,  Emerson  said, 
"  carries  innumerable  Christianities  in  its  bosom." 

Nor  will  true  religion  let  itself  be  divided  by 
even  the  name  of  God.  Many  who  reject  the 
name  are  still  true  to  its  highest  meaning;  and 
ao-nostics  and  even  atheists  often  show  more  reli- 
gious  spirit  than  the  men  who  talk  glibly  of  Deity. 
Indeed,  seeing  how  often  the  supposed  denial  of 
God  is  but  the  denial  of  some  degrading  definition 
of  him,  to  assert  a  diviner  Being,  the  true  wor- 
shiper will  be  quite  willing  to  be  called  atheist. 
One  is  sometimes  forced  to  harbor  the  thought 
which  Thoreau  uttered  and  Emerson  admired,  that 
God  himself  might  prefer  atheism.  Religion  need 
have  no  fear  that  it  will  lose  Deity.  The  blunder- 
ing boaster  of  his  irreligion,  said,  "  I'm  an  atheist, 
thank  God";  and  denials  of  Deity  have  never  been 
any  more  successful.  We  can  give  room  to  any 
denial,  knowing  that  it  will  only  deny  itself  and 
end  in  new  demonstration. 

But  this  Unity,  which  cannot  be  denied  and  is 
proclaimed  in  suns  and  souls  alike,  is  itself  the 
largest  name  of  God.  It  is  the  truth  that  includes 
all  others,  and  God  is  "One  and  His  name  One" 


76  The  Divine  Unity. 

in  a  deeper  sense  than  the  prophet  probably  meant. 
So  the  work  for  unity  among  men  is  his  highest 
service.  All  who  share  in  that,  in  every  church 
and  none,  are  his  saints.  Peace-makers,  whether 
orthodox  or  atheists,  still  "  shall  be  called  the  Sons 
of  God."  They  are  even  one  with  him;  for  still 
every  one  who  "  dwelleth  in  love,  dwelleth  in  God 
and  God  in  him,"  and  needs  not  to  invoke  a  Divine 
presence  in  worship.  Human  love  is  itself  the 
best  worship.  Human  love  is  itself  the  holiest 
presence  of  God;  and  is  the  best  proof  that  the  Di- 
vine Love,  which  has  produced  it  and  lives  in  it, 
will  fulfill  all  the  promises  whispered  there. 


THE  REVELATION  OF  GOD. 


JOHN    WHITE    CHADWICK. 


My  subject  is  the  "Revelation  of  God."  That 
there  is  such  a  revelation  cannot  be  less  certain 
than  that  God  exists,  or  even  is,  — to  make  a  philo- 
sophical distinction.  For  v^e  can  be  certain  that 
God  is  only  by  some  revelation  of  him,  God  un- 
revealed  would  not  be  necessarily  the  unknowable, 
but  he  would  certainly  be  the  unknown.  But  to 
affirm  that  a  known  God  implies  a  revelation  is  not 
to  affirm  that  the  necessary  revelation  must  be  su- 
pernatural. The  term  has  generally  had  this  mean- 
ing. But  its  derivative  meaning  is  simply  unveil- 
ing. I  am  aware  that  traditional  usage  is  more 
competent  to  fix  the  meaning  of  a  word  than  der- 
ivation. But  there  is  as  little  reason  for  letting 
traditionalism  have  all  the  good  words  as  for  letting 
the  devil  have  all  the  good  tunes,  albeit  he  is  wel- 
come to  some  that  are  considered  good  in  these  last 
days.  Everything  that  makes  God  known  to  man, 
and  everything  that  is  made  known  concerning  him, 
is  revelation. 

There  have  been  and  there  are  those  who,  desir- 
ous of  the  name  or  the  prestige  of  it,  and  some- 
times for  much  better  reasons,  while  giving  up  the 
customary  meaning  which  identifies  revelation  with 
a  supernatural — i.  e>,  miraculously  authenticated — 

77 


78  The  Revelation  of  God. 

message,  still  claim  for  it  a  semi -supernatural  mean- 
ing, in  that  they  make  it  representative  of  a  special 
kind  of  knowledge,  superior  to  and  independent  of 
experience;  a  transcendental  intuition  of  the  higher 
reason  rather  than  a  laborious  conquest  of  the  un- 
derstanding, or  in  any  way  conditioned  by  the  lim- 
its of  our  ordinary  knowledge.     But  whether  there 
is  or  not  this  double-mindedness  in  man,  this  higher 
apprehension  not  developed  from  the  lower,  I  insist 
that  we  should  not  confine  the  scope  of  revelation 
to  the  higher  knowledge,  but  rather  hold  it  true  (as 
one  of  our  own  poets.  Doctor  Martineau,  hath  said) 
"that  every  fruitful  study  of  human  things  implies 
a  real  insight  into  things  divine; "  and  that  "knowl- 
edge of   God,  like   knowledge  of  human  things, 
however  partial,  may  yet  be  direct  and  progressive," 
and,  as  such,  a  revelation  of  his  character  and  life. 
To  attain  unto  the  revelation  of  God  has  been 
the  hope,  the  dream,  the  yearning,  and  the  passion 
of  many  generations  of  the  world  and  of  countless 
millions  of  mankind.     Nor  have  the  generations  of 
the  world,  the  millions   of   mankind,  cherished  at 
any  time  a  grander  hope,  or  dreamed  a  better  dream, 
or  entertained  a  deeper  yearning,  or  been  moved 
by  a  more  glorious  passion,  than  in  relation  to  this 
matter.     There  are  those  who,  born,  or  born  again, 
into  some  Flatlandof  contented  ignorance,  are  wont 
to  think  and  speak  of  the  hope  for,  and  the  efPort 
to  attain  unto,  the  knowledge  of  God  as  fruitless  and 
ignoble.     But,  though  it  were  never  so  fruitless,  it 
would  not  be  ignoble.    Surely  by  nothing  have  men 


The  Revelation  of  (Jod.  79 

more  approved  their  nobleness  than  by  their  ina- 
bility to  sit  down  in  quiet  patience,  or  to  lie  in 
slothful  ease,  before  the  curtain  that  conceals  the 
mystery  of  the  Eternal;  even  as  the  imprisoned 
bird,  beating  his  wings  against  the  obstructions  of 
his  cage  in  futile  efforts  to  escape  into  the  heaven's 
illimitable  blue,  is  by  such  fruitlessness  approved 
a  creature  of  diviner  essence  than  if,  so  long  as  he 
had  seeds  enough  to  eat  and  other  comfortable  ap- 
pliances, he  were  not  concerned  with  anything 
which  possibly  might  lie  beyond  his  gilded  bars. 
As  the  bird's  restlessness  declares  him  native  to  the 
fields  and  sky,  so  man's  impatience  with  the  limi- 
tations of  his  knowledge  declares  him  native  to  an 
infinite  inheritance  of  expansive  reason.  Nor  is  it 
any  derogation  to  his  nature  that  he  has  been  hardly 
more  contented  with  blank  ignorance  than  with  the 
observation  of  a  multitude  of  unrelated  facts  or 
even  with  their  co-ordination  into  laws  of  narrow 
range  and  special  application.  The  true,  the  char- 
acteristic man  is  like  unto  his  glorious  image  who 
was  busy  ever 

"  Searching  through  all  he  felt  or  saw, 
The  springs  of  life,  the  depths  of  awe, 
To  find  the  law  within  the  law." 

Like  the  Orient  sage,  he  seeks  "  an  all-pervading 
unity."  Like  one  who  climbs  a  mountain's  mighty 
stairs,  and  finds  himself  at  length  with  nothing  but 
the  immeasurable  sky  above  him,  so  from  general- 
ization to  generalization  he  ascends,  to  find  himself 


80  The  Revelation  of  God. 

at  length  alone  with  the  Alone,  embraced  and  over- 
bowed  with  nothing  but  the  infinite  of  God. 

And  as  the  search  for  God  declares  the  greatness 
and  nobility  of  those  v/ith  whom  it  is  a  holy  pas- 
sion, and  would  if  it  were  void  of  all  result  objec- 
tive to  the  seeking  mind,  so  must  the  many  forms 
of  faith  in  supernatural  revelation,  or  at  least  the 
many  efforts  to  establish  such  a  faith,  be  recognized 
as   arguing,  not,  as  many  teach  of  late,  some  mis- 
erable defect   of  manhood,  but  the   greatness  of 
man's  heart.     To  have  a  certain  knowledge  of  the 
highest  things,  to  see  Him  as  he  is, — surely  there 
is  no  belittling  or  dishonorable  disposition  here.  At 
the  worst,  it  only  argues  men's  impatience  with  the 
slowness  of  the  ordinary  methods  of  their  thought, 
or  some  dissatisfaction  with  their  tentative  results. 
They  would  know  certainly  and  they  would  know 
at  once  "  the  depth  of  the  riches  both  of  the  wis- 
dom and  knowledge  of  God."     Be  sure  that  never 
have  the  miracles,  so  called,  approved  the  revelation 
to  men's  minds  at  the  initial  or  any  other  stage  of 
the  development  of  a  "revealed  religion."     What 
has  approved  it  has  been  the  larger  thought  of  God 
contained  in  it,  the  higher  and  the  holier  thought 
of  him.     The  miracles  were  nothing  but  the  imagi- 
native tribute  of  men's  hearts  to  the  greatness  of 
some  human  personality — their  stammering  speech 
of  gratitude  and  praise — or  to  the  announcement  of 
some  grander  vision  of  the  eternal  things.     The  in- 
fallible church  or  book,  or  Christ  within  the  book, 
so  understood,  gain  nothing  on  the  side  of  their  in- 


The  Revelation  of  God.  81 

fallibility ;  but  they  gain  immensely  on  the  side  of 
their  relation  to  the  religious  consciousness,  ex- 
pressing as  they  do  its  impatience  with  all  partial 
and  all  "regulative  truth,"  its  intolerance  of  delu- 
sion or  deception  in  the  sphere  of  matters  of  such 
vital  interest.  Revelation  there  was  indeed  in  the 
prophetic  souls  of  the  Old  Testament  order, — in 
Amos  and  Isaiah  and  the  Great  Unknown  of  the 
Captivity,  whose  thought  was  as  near  to  that  of 
Jesus  as  the  best  days  in  April  are  to  leafy  June ; 
in  that  "Hymn  Book  of  the  Second  Temple"  which 
contained  the  rarest  of  the  Psalms;  in  the  Word 
made  flesh  in  Jesus ;  and  not  less  in  Paul,  though 
in  his  flesh  he  fancied  there  was  no  good  thing. 

But  it  is  one  thing  to  honor  and  to  praise  the 
impatience  with  half-truth  or  sad  uncertainty  which 
has  found  expression  in  the  demand  for  a  miracu- 
lous revelation,  or  to  see  in  the  afiirmation  of  such 
a  revelation  the  tribute  of  imagination  to  a  glori- 
ous personality  or  a  higher  thought  of  God;  and  it 
is  quite  another  thing  to  accept  the  theory  of  super- 
natural revelation,  or  to  imagine  that  there  is  here 
a  method  of  escape  from  the  disabilities  of  natural 
reason. 

"  They  reckon  ill  who  leave  me  out; 
When  me  they  fly,  I  am  the  wings," 

the  natural  Reason  sings  rebukingly  to  all  who 
think  they  can  climb  up  some  other  way  than  hers 
into  the  fold  of  Truth.  Unless  every  one  who  claims 
that  he  has  a  vision  or  a  sign  is  to  be  accepted 
equally  with  every  other,  Reason  must   arbitrate 


82  The  Revelation  of  God. 

upon  the  different  claims.  Whether  or  not  the  res- 
nrrectiou  of  Jesus,  for  example,  is  a  supernatural 
proof  of  immortality,  the  fact  of  such  a  resurrection 
is  dependent  on  a  film  of  human  testimony  so  tenu- 
ous that  a  brave  man,  or  wise,  would  much  rather 
trust  to  his  own  nature's  prophecy  than  to  such  a 
thing  as  that.  But  the  film  by  which  the  resurrec- 
tion hangs  is  not  more  tenuous  than  that  which  sus- 
tains every  fact  on  which  depends  the  evidence  of  a 
supernatural  revelation,— maa;ma  e  mirdmis  sus- 
pendens. 

But  that  there  is  no  supernatural  revelation  and 
that,  even  if  there  were,  our  ultimate  reliance  would 
be  upon  our  natural  intelligence,  are  statements  that 
suggest  no  fears,  excite  no  terrors,  for  the  man  to 
whom  our  natural  intelligence  is  equal  to  the  soul's 
necessity  for  finding  God.  For  such  a  one  there  is 
no  lack  of  revelation.  There  is  nothing  but  reve- 
lation. The  universe  is  full  of  visions  and  of  voices. 
The  things  we  are  obliged  to  say,  which  manage 
soon  or  late  to  say  themselves  while  we  stand  by 
and  wonder,  are  better  worth  the  saying  than  are 
those  we  formulate  with  the  greatest  care.  And  so 
there  has  not  been  a  time  during  the  last  quarter 
of  a  century  and  more,  synchronizing  with  the  de- 
velopment of  various  doctrines  of  religious  nescience 
and  the  agnostic  temper,  when  between  the  lines  of 
their  imposing  expositions  some  have  not  read  a 
message  of  religious  affirmation,  thrilling  their 
hearts  with  generous  and  lofty  cheer.  And  with 
each  restatement  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Unknown 


The  Revelation  of  God.  83 

God,  the  affirmations,  at  first  meagrely  implied, 
come  out  in  clearer  lines,  until  at  length  they  are 
the  text,  and  the  original  nescience  fades  into  a 
dimness  that  hardly  blurs  the  fair  and  open  page. 
Surely,  we  are  far  from  the  kingdom  of  agnosticism 
and  not  far  from  the  kingdom  of  God,  when  we  are 
told  that  "we  are  always  in  the  presence  of  an  In- 
finite and  Eternal  Energy  from  which  all  things 
proceed ; "  and  we  are  well  within  its  broad  and  fair 
demesne,  when  we  are  told  that  "  there  exists  a 
power,  to  which  no  limit  in  time  or  space  is  con- 
ceivable, and  that  all  the  phenomena  of  the  Uni- 
verse, whether  they  be  what  we  call  material  or  what 
we  call  spiritual  phenomena,  are  manifestations  of 
this  Infinite  and  Eternal  Power." 

Manifestation  is  but  another  word  for  revelation. 
"Though  unknown,  yet  well  known!"  may  we  not 
cry,  triumphantly  as  Paul,  of  such  a  power  as  this  ? 
Known  as  infinite,  known  as  eternal,  known  as  the 
source  of  everything  that  is,  known  by  its  mani- 
fested life  as  such  a  God  as  is  made  manifest!  And 
how  unknown  f  As  we  are  to  each  other  save  as  we 
are  made  manifest,  save  as  we  are  revealed  by  our 
phenomenal  life,  by  the  living  garments  that  we 
wear,  the  vesture  that  doth  grossly  (meaning 
grandly)  hem  us  in.  Unknown  as  the  abysmal 
deeps  of  our  own  personality  are  unknown  to  us ;  ay, 
as  the  loveliest  or  rudest  object  on  which  we  can  lay 
our  hands  is  unknown  to  us,  both  in  its  inmost  es- 
sence and  in  its  total  range  of  implication.  Thread- 
bare is  the  bit  of  verse  embodying  this  perception; 


84  The  Revelation  of  God. 

worn  so  in  faithful  service  of  a  truth  too  long  dis- 
honored among  men:— 

"  Flower  in  the  crannied  wall, 
I  pluck  you  out  of  the  crannies; 
Hold  you  here  in  my  hand,  root  and  all, 
Little  flower ;  but  if  I  could  understand 
What  you  are,  root  and  all,  and  all  in  all, 
I  should  know  what  God  and  Man  is." 

Never,  it  seems  to  me,  has  there  been  less  occa- 
sion than  there  is  to-day  for  men  to  take  counsel 
with  their  fears,  as  if  the  operation  of  our  later 
thinking  were  to  make  the  revelation  of  God  less 
vast  and  luminous  than  it  has  been  as  apprehended 
by  the  supernaturalist  or  by  the  semi  supernatural- 
ism  of  the  more  daring  of  the  Transcendental  school. 
Never  has  the  revelation  of  God  assumed  such 
grand  proportions  or  so  grave  a  charm,  such  an 
awful  splendor  or  such  penetrating  sweetness,  as  at 
the  present  time.  And  it  comes  as  one  of  old,  not 
to  destroy,  but  to  fulfill.  It  takes  up  into  itself  the 
best  of  all  that  has  been  in  the  revelations  of  the 
past.  Jesus  is  still  Immanuel,  God  with  us;  he  is 
still  the  Word  made  flesh.  And  the  sorrow  and  the 
gladness  with  which  men  turned  from  him,  when 
he  grew  hard  and  cold  to  their  imaginative  appre- 
hension, to  worship  at  his  mother's  gentle  feet,  finds 
here  its  justification. 

If  revelation  is,  indeed,  everything  that  makes 
God  known  to  men,  and  everything  that  is  made 
known  of  him,  the  revelation  of  God  is  something 
of    immense  inclusiveness   and   boundless   range. 


The  Revelation  of  God.  85 

The  Old  Testament  and  the  New,  the  mighty  per- 
sonalities and  the  inspired — because  inspiring — 
utterances  that  they  report,  are  but  a  little  frag- 
ment of  the  whole.  Equally  fragmentary,  I  am 
bound  to  think,  is  that  department  of  our  human 
knowledge  which  is  resumed  under  the  name  of 
Science.  Here,  for  some,  is  no  revelation,  but  the 
denial  of  that  traditionally  received  as  such,  and 
the  confession  that  all  revelation  is  impossible. 
Here,  for  others,  is  an  actual  revelation  that  is 
exclusive  of  all  others.  With  neither  of  these 
widely  different  factions  shall  we  find  ourselves 
able  to  agree.  Not  with  the  first,  most  certainly. 
For  if  Science  be  not  revelation,  if  she  does  not 
report  a  real,  and  not  merely  a  phenomenal  exist- 
ence,— the  relations  of  things  existing  independ- 
ently  of  our  sentient  and  psychic  apprehensions 
and  not  merely  the  projection  of  these  apprehensions 
on  an  inner  void, — she  is  at  once  discrowned  and 
stripped  of  all  her  royal  habiliments  ;  and  the  con- 
trast of  Ludovicus  and  Ludovicus  Rex,  in  Thack- 
eray's amusing  picture,  does  not  begin  to  indicate 
fully  the  disparity  of  her  clothed  and  her  unclothed 
condition.  Surely,  the  men  of  science  who  have 
"loved  truth  and  lavished  life's  best  oil,"  not 
"  amid  the  dust  of  books  to  find  her,"  but  in  moun- 
tain heights  and  ocean  deeps,  and  in  a  thousand  and 
ten  thousand  places  where  her  facts  have  challenged 
scrutiny,  have  not  been  inspired  to  scorn  delights 
and  live  laborious  days  by  any  miserable  egotistic 
notion  that  they  were  leading  a  mere  moonshine 


86  The  Revelation  of  God. 

dance  with  their  own  shadows;  that  they  were 
merely  formulating  the  order  of  their  own  percep- 
tions,—no,  not  perceptions,  for  there  is  nothing  to 
perceive,  but  their  own  self-stirred  activity  of  pre- 
sentation. No!  whatever  foolishness  of  this  sort 
men  of  science  have  allowed  themselves  when  off 
upon  some  holiday  excursion  of  the  speculative 
kind,  the  inspiration  of  their  working  hours  has 
been  that  they  were  able  to  discover  the  relations, 
part  to  part,  of  an  objective  world.  What  differ- 
ence does  it  make,  so  long  as  all  are  "  drugged 
with  the  same  frenzy?"  A  world  of  difference. 
Yes,  just  exactly  that ;  the  difference  of  a  world 
that  is  a  reality  and  a  revelation  of  the  actual  God, 
and  a  no-world  which  is  the  Brocken  spectre  shadow 
of  ourselves,  Ixion-like,  embracing  an  illusive  cloud. 
But,  if  we  may  not  accept  this  suicide  of  Science 
as  a  fair  account  of  man's  relation  to  the  universe, 
as  little,  as  a  fair  account  of  this  and  of  God's 
revelation  of  himself,  may  we  accept  the  doctrine 
which  declares  that  science  is  the  only  revelation 
of  eternal  things.  This  were  a  thousand  times 
better  than  the  doctrine  of  a  universe  and  God 
projected  from  the  mind  of  man,  but  it  has  its  own 
peculiar  limitations.  For,  while  it  might  be  possi- 
ble, availing  one's  self  of  the  kinship  of  science 
with  the  most  ordinary  knowledge,  to  push  back  so 
far  the  genesis  of  science  that  a  certain  scientific 
character  might  be  predicated  of  the  earliest  re- 
ligious notions  of  mankind,  the  fact  would  still 
remain  conspicuous  that  religion  had  been  a  mighty 


The  Revelation  of  God.  87 

and  imposing  power  upon  the  earth  for  centuries 
and  millenniums  before  the  endeavor  to  attain  a 
quantitative  certainty  in  the  prevision  of  things 
future  had  produced  an  appreciable  body  of  results 
to  which  the  designation  "Science"  can  be  right- 
fully applied.  Science  had  made  but  little  progress 
in  the  world — Thales,  its  earliest  Greek,  had  still 
two  centuries  and  more  to  tarry  in  the  pre- existent 
heavens — when  Homer  wrote  of 

"  When  in  heaven  the  stars  about  the  moon 
Look  beautiful,  when  all  the  winds  are  laid. 
And  every  height  comes  out,  and  jutting  peak 
And  valley,  and  the  immeasurable  heavens 
Break  open  to  their  highest,  and  all  the  stars 
Shine  and  the  shepherd  gladdens  in  his  heart." 

And,  long  before  he  wrote  of  it,  the  spectacle  was 
there  to  see,  the  mind  confronting  it  to  be  filled 
with  awe,  and  thrilled  with  mystery,  and  roused  to 
questioning. 

And,  saying  this,  what  do  we  say  but  that,  long 
before  the  birth  of  Science,  of  which  Religion  was 
in  fact  the  foster  mother,  there  was  the  revelation 
of  God  as  Power  and  Beauty  and  Beneficence  in 
the  material  universe,  and  there  was  the  appre- 
hension of  this  revelation  by  the  human  soul.  The 
former  part  of  the  nineteenth  Psalm  is  confessedly 
one  of  the  earliest  Old  Testament  fragments.  The 
writer  of  it  had  probably  very  little  science,  proba- 
bly none  worth  mentioning  ;  but  he  had  much  of 
worship,  much  of  religion  as  worship,  much  sense 
of  a  divine  revelation  when  he  wrote  :     "  The  heav- 


88  The  Revelation  of  God. 

ens  declare  the  glory  of  God,  and  the  firmament 
showeth  his  handiwork.  Day  uttereth  instruction 
unto  day,  and  night  showeth  knowledge  unto  night. 
They  have  no  speech  nor  language,  and  their  voice 
is  not  heard ;  but  their  sound  is  gone  out  through 
all  the  earth,  and  their  words  to  the  end  of  the 
world."  That  we  must  have  Science  to  legitimate 
Religion,  to  make  Revelation  possible, — it  is  a 
brave  man  who  does  not  hesitate  to  take  up  this 
position.  For  it  is  a  position  which,  if  it  could  be 
maintained,  would  discredit  all  religion  antecedent 
to  the  genesis  of  science,  all  subsequent  save  in  the 
measure  of  its  scientific  inspiration.  If  revelation 
and  religion  could  be  only  for  the  scientific,  they 
would  not  be  universal ;  they  would  be  only  for 
the  few,  or  they  would  be  second-hand,  as  science 
now  is  second-hand  for  all  except  the  few  whose 
opinions  are  original  or  derived  intelligently  from 
those  that  are.  But  no :  religion  has  not  primarily 
or  mainly  come  to  man  by  deliberate  scientific 
ratiocination,  but  by  spontaneous  experience.  It  is 
the  whole  of  man  responding  to  the  whole  of  God. 
Human  nature  has  not  thought  out,  it  has  experi- 
enced, religion.  Its  cumulative  and  hereditary  ex- 
perience of  the  wonder  and  mystery  of  the  external 
universe,  the  greater  wonder  and  the  vaster  mys- 
tery of  its  own  inward  life,  have  made  religion,  the 
upward  look  of  awe  and  adoration,  the  outward 
look  of  sympathy  and  fellow-service,  the  inward 
look  of  mingled  self-abasement  and  self -reverence. 


The  Revelation  of  God.  89 

as  natural  to  it  as  hunger,  sleep,  or  normal  respira- 
tion to  man's  physical  life. 

And  so,  to  those  who  claim  a  scientific  basis  for 
religion,  our  answer  is,  "  Other  foundation  can  no 
man  lay  than  is  laid ; "  and  the  foundation  of  re- 
ligion is  laid  in  human  nature,  as  such ;  in  the  great 
primal  instincts  of  the  soul.  It  has  been  deepen- 
ing down  and  broadening  out  through  all  the  cen- 
turies, but  the  agencies  that  have  deepened  it  and 
broadened  it  have  been,  scientific  only  in  a  very 
moderate  degree.  Before  Science  was  fairly  born, 
it  had  already  become  fixed  immovably.  And  when 
Science  went  into  disgrace  and  banishment  for 
well-nigh  a  thousand  years,  as  it  did  from  the  fall 
of  the  Western  Empire  to  the  later  Renaissance, 
the  original  foundation  of  religion  was  still  there  ; 
and  up  from  it  into  the  cold  and  cheerless  air  sprang 
many  rare  and  beauteous  structures  of  the  mind 
and  heart,  many  affections,  aspirations,  and  fideli- 
ties which  the  scientific  spirit  dares  not  regard  with 
absolute  contempt.  Not  only  so,  but  even  in  these 
latest  times  the  amount  of  scientific  apprehension 
does  not  by  any  means  report  the  amount  of  reve- 
lation and  of  religious  joy  therein.  There  are 
men  and  women  still  to  whom  the  meanest  flower 
that  blows,  unanalyzed,  unclassified,  can  give 
thoughts  that  do  often  lie  too  deep  for  tears.  There 
are  men  and  women  to  whom,  in  general,  the  un- 
scientific aspect  of  the  world,  the  beauty  of  its  days 
and  nights,  the  wonder  of  its  fresh  and  growing 


90  The  Revelation  of  God. 

things,  the  summer's  bounty,  the  return  of  spring, 
the  mountain's  vastness,  and  the  moaning  sea  are  a 
more  moving  revelation  of  the  highest  God  than  all 
their  telescopes  and  microscopes  and  chemic  tubes 
afPord  to  other  men  who, 

"  Seeing  all  things  intermittently, 
In  disconnection  dull  and  spiritless, 
Break  down  all  grandeur." 

But  this  is  not  to  say  that  Science  has  not  made 
important  and  immense  additions  to  the  revelation 
of  God  once  possible  for  men.  Once  clearly  un- 
derstand that  the  basis  of  religion  is  not  scientific, 
that  science  is  not  the  only  organon  of  revelation, 
that  men  cannot  live  by  the  bread  of  science  only, 
but  by  every  word  of  art  and  poetry  and  spontane- 
ous apprehension  that  proceedeth  from  the  mouth 
of  God,  and  we  can  well  afPord  to  allow  that  the 
revelation  of  God  has  been  mightily  enlarged  by 
the  development  of  science,  and  in  some  particu- 
lars made  vastly  more  impressive  to  the  mind,  more 
agitating  and  inspiring  to  the  heart.  A  mere  Bar- 
mecide  feast  of  empty  phrases  was  the  old  theo- 
logical talk  about  the  infinite  in  comparison  with 
the  scientific  infinite  of  the  times  through  which 
the  stars  have  shaped  themselves  from  the  primor- 
dial fires,  the  spaces  through  which  they  sweep  on 
their  majestic  curves,  the  masses  whose  attractions 
and  repulsions  make  all  nature's  peace.  But  the 
infinitely  little  is  to  the  eye  of  the  imagination  a 
more  moving  spectacle  than  the  infinitely  great. 
Consider,  too,  what  glory  and  honor  Science  brings, 


The  Revelation  of  God.  91 

as  never  could  our  speculative  theology,  into  the 
temple  of  our  Unitarian  faith.  A  resolution  of 
apparent  difference  into  essential  unity  is  the  out- 
come of  all  science.  Every  part  of  the  plant  turns 
out  to  be  a  modification  of  the  leaf;  the  skull,  a 
modified  vertebra;  our  little  earth  to  be  made  of 
the  same  stuff  as  the  planets  and  the  sun  and  far- 
thest stars;  our  coal  but  so  much  buried  sunlight, 
which  ages  since  organized  itself  into  ferny  leaf 
and  stalk;  our  species  of  animals  and  plants  to  be 
only  some  distinct  varieties ;  our  genera,  only  wider 
species;  heat,  life,  magnetism,  electricity,  vital 
force,  so  many  modes  of  motion;  so  that  "  our  Uni- 
tarian literature,"  of  which  something  has  been 
said  from  time  to  time,  includes,  with  much  be- 
sides, the  whole  body  of  modern  science.  Then, 
too,  in  measuring  our  debt  to  science,  its  enlarge- 
ment and  its  exaltation  of  our  sense  of  infinite 
revelation,  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  even  our 
most  casual  apprehension  of  the  world  is  variously 
conditioned  by  our  gradual  appropriation  of  the 
results  of  science;  that  we  see,  not  with  our  eyes 
only,  but  with  our  brains  and  with  our  minds, — 
our  minds  made  over  by  the  power  of  science,  so 
that  a  certain  "mind-stuff"  mingles  with  all  visible 
things,  and  makes  them  very  different  from  what 
they  were  to  men  of  former  times, — a  glory  in  the 
grass,  a  splendor  in  the  flower,  they  draw  from  dead 
men's  minds,  not  from  their  buried  dust. 

But  the  revelation  of  God  apparent  in  the  face 
of  outward  things  and  the  laws  of  their  develop- 


92  The  Revelation  of  God. 

ment  and  harmony  is  not  sufficient  for  the  mind 
and  heart  of  man,  even  when  to  the  fullness  of  his 
spontaneous  apprehension  he  has  added  all  that 
Science,  too,  has  brought  of  marvel  and  surprise. 
This  is  a  criticism  that  is  often  made  upon  the  nat- 
ural religion  of  the  present  time  by  those  who  find  it 
hardly  more  satisfactory  to  their  deepest  needs 
than  the  natural  theology  of  the  Paleyologians  of 
former  generations.  And  it  is  well  considered. 
Only  it  is  a  criticism  that  does  not  equally  apply  to 
every  statement  that  has  been,  or  that  can  be,  made 
of  natural  revelation  and  religion.  It  applies 
where  nature  is  conceived  as  co-extensive  with  the 
under-human  world  of  inorganic  and  organic 
things, — if  in  the  last  analysis  there  is  any  inor- 
ganic thing  or  particle  in  all  the  universe  of  God. 
But  nature  is  not  always  so  conceived;  and  the 
criticism  does  not  apply  where  human  nature, 
equally  with  earth-nature  and  sky-nature  and  all 
under-human  nature,  is  included  in  its  scope.  The 
word  of  the  more  thoughtful  is  that  "  all  the  phe- 
nomena of  nature,  whether  they  be  what  we  call 
natural  or  what  we  call  spiritual,  are  manifesta- 
tions of  an  infinite  and  eternal  power."  The 
under-human  universe  is  not  enough.  That  is  a 
manifestation  of  immeasurable  Power,  of  glorious 
Beauty,  of  majestic  Unity,  of  unwearying  Faith- 
fulness, of  all-embracing,  all-enfolding  Order,  Har- 
mony and  Law. 

But  the  revelation  of  God  in  these  high  ways  is 
not  sufficient  for  men's  hearts.     They  would  have 


The  Revelation  of  God.  93 

him  reveal  himself  as  goodness;  they  would  have 
him  reveal  himself  as  love.  Here  is  the  true  Cur 
Deus  Homo  of  the  centuries:  "  Why  God  was  made 
man;"  why  he  was  made  Jesus;  why,  Jesus  hard- 
ening to  the  awful  judge  of  mediaeval  thought, 
men  turned  for  comfort  to  his  mother's  breast  and 
her  embracing  arms.  It  was  long  before  the  time 
of  Robert  Browning,  but  there  was  distinct  antici- 
pation of  his  stout  assertion  that 

"A  loving  worm  within  its  clod 
Were  diviner  than  a  loveless  God 
Amid  his  worlds," 

Even  where  men  have  ascribed  to  God  particular 
sentiments  and  actions  that  were  more  devilish  than 
divine, — as  in  the  scheme  of  Calvin,  for  example, — 
they  have  insisted  on  his  goodness  and  his  love. 
There  is  nothing  more  pathetic  in  the  biography  of 
man  than  his  insistence,  "  Though  the  Lord  slay  me, 
yet  will  I  trust  in  him."  Bemembering  under  what 
bonds  we  place  each  other  by  our  mutual  trust,  un- 
der what  bonds  is  the  Eternal  placed  by  the  high 
trust  that  millions,  overborne  and  crushed  in  life's 
hard  fray,  have  put  in  him,  so  that,  if  he  were  the 
fiend  that  men  have  sometimes  painted  him,  using 
his  giant  power  most  tyrannously  like  a  giant,  it 
would  seem  that  long  ere  this  he  must  have  been 
compelled  to  pure  beneficence!  Mindful  of  these 
phenomena,  we  may  be  sure  that  "  Cosmic  Theism  " 
will  never  answer  to  men's  cry  for  goodness  and  for 
love  in  God's  self-revelation,  unless  it  is  made 
clear  that  the  glory  of  the  human  not  less  than  the 


94  The  Revelation  of  God. 

glory  of  the  material  universe  is  part  and  parcel  of 
his  glory.  The  divinity  of  man  and  the  humanity 
of  God, — we  can  as  ill  spare  the  second  term  of 
this  equation  as  the  first.  And  it  is  literally  an 
equation.  To  affirm  either  is  to  affirm  the  other.  But 
the  humanity  of  God  is  what  the  human  heart  must 
needs  most  steadfastly  affirm.  Let  the  astrono- 
mers, the  cosmologists,  go  on  indefinitely  expand- 
ing and  glorifying  our  conception  of  the  material 
universe,  and  the  great  majority  of  men  will  turn 
from  this  upon  the  one  hand,  and  from  the  God 
whom  it  reports,  to  the  loving  man  of  Nazareth  or 
to  Mary,  "mother  mild,"  with  their  passionate  ad- 
miration, with  their  tumult  of  devout  acclaim.  And, 
doing  so,  they  would  do  well  and  right.  For  "the 
glory  of  God  in  the  face  of  Jesus  Christ"  is  a  more 
excellent  glory  than  any  of  the  throbbing  firma- 
ment of  stars ;  the  ideal  of  Motherhood  makes  every 
planet  dim. 

But  it  is  not  as  if  we  were  reduced  to  the  alterna- 
tives of  a  revelation  of  cosmic  power  and  splendor, 
harmony  and  beauty,  and  the  revelation  of  good- 
ness and  love  in  the  man  Jesus  or  of  tenderness  in 
his  mother's  face.  There  are  no  such  alternatives; 
for  there  is  no  legitimate  process  of  thought  which 
gives  to  us  the  love  of  Jesus  and  the  tenderness  of 
Mary  as  a  divine  revelation  which  does  not  give  to 
us  equally  all  human  love,  all  human  tenderness. 
And  so,  in  truth,  our  evidence  of  the  humanity  of 
God  is  infinitely  greater  than  it  would  be  if  the  super- 
natm*al  revelation  of  that  humanity  in  Jesus  were  an 


The  Revelation  of  God.  95 

established  fact,  which  it  is  uot  by  auy  means.  There 
is  no  evidence  for  any  special  revelation  of  the  hu- 
manity of  God.  But  there  is  ample  evidence  of  the 
natural  and  perpetual  revelation  of  his  humanity  in 
all  the  men  and  women  and  in  all  the  little  children 
that  ever  have  been,  are  now,  or  ever  will  be,  here  on 
this  earth  or  any  other  that  is  circling  on  its  way, 
freiorhted  with  human  life.  It  is  now  several  years 
since  Stopford  Brooke  wrote  a  delightful  sermon  on 
the  childhood  of  God,  but  I  doubt  if  it  contains 
a  line  which  now  he  would  prefer  to  blot.  Why 
but  because  all  phenomena,  material  and  spiritual, 
are  manifestations,  revelations,  of  the  Infinite  and 
Eternal  Energy  from  which  all  things  proceed? 
Nothing  is  evolved  which  is  not  first  involved. 
There  must  be  a  great  fountain  of  humanity  in 
God,  or  there  would  be  no  humanity  in  the  world. 
There  must  be  a  great  fountain  of  childlikeness  in 
him,  or  there  would  be  no  childhood  in  the  world. 
There  must  be  a  great  fountain  of  motherhood 
in  him,  or  there  would  be  no  human  mother- 
hood. But,  as  it  is,  our  latest  science  justifies 
us,  as  never  did  the  old  theology,  in  lifting  up  our 
hearts  to  him  with  the  ascription,  "O  thou  who  art 
our  Father  and  our  Mother! " 

Some  danger  here,  perhaps  it  may  occur  to  you, 
of  making  the  Eternal  altogether  such  a  one  as 
ourselves.  Not  altogether,  and  not  much.  "As  the 
heavens  are  higher  than  the  earth,  so  are  his  ways 
higher  than  our  ways,  and  his  thoughts  than  our 
thoughts."    Here  is  no  great  non-natural  man,  and, 


96  The  Revelation  of  God. 

if  "sweet  human  hands  and  lips  and  eyes,"  only  as 
these  make  good  our  human  helpfulness  and  love 
and  joy.  "  He  that  made  the  eye,  shall  he  not  see  ?" 
is  an  argument  which  loses  all  its  force  with  the 
cessation  of  our  thought  of  God  as  an  outside  me- 
chanical creator;  with  our  acceptance  of  the 
thought  that  he  is  the  infinite,  immanent,  organic 
life  of  everything  that  is.  But  that  the  phenomena 
of  will,  intelligence,  personality,  goodness,  love,  as 
manifestations  of  his  infinite  being,  reveal  him  as 
not  less  than  personal,  volitional,  intelligent,  benefi- 
cent, and  loving, — that  two  and  two  make  four  is 
not  more  sure  than  this.  So  much  at  least  of  per- 
sonality, of  will,  of  intelligence,  of  goodness,  of 
love,  there  is  in  him  as  there  is  in  all  humanity,  past, 
present,  and  to  be.  But,  where  there  is  so  much 
of  immanent  actuality,  the  transcendent  possibility 
must  be  infinitely  more. 

But  what  if  it  be  said  that,  when  the  revelation 
of  God  is  so  greatly  apprehended,  when  the  uni- 
verse is  regarded  as  the  manifest  God,  we  do  but 
come  out  at  the  same  door  where  we  went  in,  we  do 
but  formulate  an  identical  proposition,  a  verbal 
equation  ?  Something  of  this  sort  has  been  said 
repeatedly.  We  start  with  the  universe,  and  our 
God  is  but  its  verbal  counterpart.  Well,  this  is  true 
enough  of  the  universe  as  such.  The  whole  of  God 
is  immanent  in  the  whole  of  that.  But  he  is  in- 
finitely transcendent  of  the  universe  as  known  to  us, 
not  merely  individually,  but  collectively.  The  aggre- 
gate of  science  is  no  small  amount;  but,  if  we  could 


The  Revelation  of  Ood.  97 

take  it  all  into  our  individual  consciousness,  we 
should  still  be  obliged  to  say,  "  Lo,  these  are  parts 
of  his  ways;  but  how  little  is  yet  known  of  him!" 
Yea,  verily,  how  little  in  comparison  with  the  bound- 
less whole! 

"Ay,  come  up  hither!  from  this  wave-washed  mound 
Unto  the  farthest  flood-brim  look  with  me, 

Then  reach  on  with  thy  thought  till  that  be  drowned. 
Miles  and  miles  distant  though  the  last  line  be. 

And,  though  thy  soul  sail  leagues  and  leagues  beyond, 
Still  leagues  beyond  those  leagues  there  is  more  sea." 

But  the  simile  is  pale  and  meagre  to  report  the 
infinite  of  God  that  reaches  on  and  on, — an  infinite 
of  Power  and  Beauty,  Wisdom  and  Law  and  Love, — 
beyond  the  farthest  possible  horizon  of  the  hill- top 
view  of  human  science.  And  the  God  of  our  imag- 
ination, of  our  worship,  of  our  confidence  and  trust, 
is  not  the  God  of  the  manifested  part  alone,  though 
that  is  practically  infinite,  but  of  the  manifested  and 
unmanifested  whole;  the  last  not  as  a  vague  and 
formless  mystery,  but  as  a  mystery  shot  through 
and  through  with  glory  of  the  known.  His  glory 
is  the  glory  of  the  known  cubed  upon  by  an  infinite 
exponent.  Well  may  our  hearts  leap  up  at  such  a 
thought,  at  such  a  vision,  far  more  than  theirs  who 
heard  the  Corybantic  mysteries ;  far  more  than  theirs 
who  have  apprehended  the  revelation  of  God  as  so 
much  splendid  personality  and  helpful  teaching  as 
the  covers  of  the  Bible  fold  within  their  wide  em- 
brace! 

But  another  sliape  arises,  and  another  still.    The 


98  The  Revelation  of  God. 

first  is  physical  evil, — that  tragic  side  of  animal  and 
human  life  which  set  on  fire  the  page  of  Stuart 
Mill,  which  generally  ran  a  cold,  sometimes  an  icy, 
stream.  The  second  is  moral  evil, — "the  problem 
of  sin,"  in  theological  phrase, — man's  vast  capacity 
for  doing  harm  and  wrong,  and  his  exercise  of  this 
in  manifold  and  monstrous  ways.  Now,  if  all  we 
know  of  natural  :.nd  human  things  is  revelation,  the 
rapacities  and  ferocities  of  animal  life  must  be  so 
equally  with  the  strength  of  the  strong  mountains, 
the  splendor  of  the  mobile  sea,  and  the  beseeching 
loveliness  of  flowers.  So  equally  revelation  with 
the  greatness  of  a  Hampden  or  a  Washington,  the 
goodness  of  a  Paul  or  Jesus,  is  the  littleness  of 
thousands  who  care  for  nothing  but  to  eat  and  drink 
and  propagate  still  baser  than  themselves,  the  wick- 
edness of  a  Nero  or  a  Borgia  on  an  imperial  or  papal 
throne.  How  then  ?  Do  not  the  baseness  and  the 
wickedness  neutralize  the  greatness  and  the  good- 
ness, so  that  our  revelation  is  a  revelation  of  infi- 
nite indifference  ? — 

"Alike  to  him  the  better,  the  worse, — 
The  glowing  angel,  the  outcast  corse!" 

No,  it  does  not,  because  it  is  the  impulses  of  joy 
and  happiness  that  build  the.  animal  world;  and,  if 
they  were  not  dominant,  that  world  would  rush  to 
ruin,  as  it  seems  not  in  the  least  inclined  to  do. 
No,  it  does  not,  because  the  trend  of  things  is  ever- 
more from  low  to  higher  things,  from  good  to  better, 
and  from  better  onward  still.  No,  it  does  not,  be- 
cause, if  God  would  pass  from  being  to  existence, 


The  Revelation  of  God.  99 

from  the  infinite  absolute  into  finite  manifestation, 
so  help  him  God  he  could  no  otherwise  than  introduce 
the  element  of  pain  and  tragedy  into  sentient  life. 
The  revelation  of  tragedy  is  no  more  nor  less  than 
the  revelation  of  a  God  who  frankly  and  unflinch- 
ingly preferred  all  possible  animal  and  human  pain 
to  eternal  self- containment,  to  the  non-existence  of 
animal  or  human  world.      The  revelation  of  the 
word  made  flesh  in  an  Alva  or  a  Torquemada,  in 
gluttons  and  debauchees  and  murderers,  is  the  rev- 
elation of  a  God  who  could  not  make  man  glorious 
with  all  the  possibilities  of    moral   fi'eedom   and 
with  the  actions  that  such  freedom  brings  without 
making  it  possible  for  him  to  choose  the  path  of 
those  whose  feet  take  hold  on  hell.     If  men  were 
all  automata,  then,  if  they  did  not  go  through  theii 
moral  motions  properly,  we  might  well  blame  the 
infinite  artificer,  save  as  we  should  not  have  the 
sense  of  blame  or  praise  in  us  at  all.     But,  verily, 
for  those  who  know  whereof  they  speak,  a  sinner 
acting  freely  were  better  than  an  automatic  saint, 
a  freely   acting   Nero   better   than   an   automatic 
Christ.     Moreover,  in  all   the  contradictions  and 
collisions  of  the  moral  order,  God  evermore  reveals 
himself  as  a  power  that  makes  for  righteousness. 
Abraham  Lincoln  said  to  some  ghostly  counselor, 
who  was  anxious  for  him  so  to  conduct  himself  that 
the  Lord  should  be  on  his  side,  that  to  see  to  it 
tnat  he  was  on  the  Lord's  side  was  his  principal 
concern.     The  revelation  of  God  is   a  revelation 
that  the  Lord's  side  is  ever  that   of   Truth   and 


100  The  Revelation  of  God. 

Righteousness.  One  half -regrets  the  softening  of 
the  new  translation,  the  old  expressed  a  truth  of  so 
much  greater  range:  "Though  I  make  my  bed  in 
hell,  Thou  art  there."  There,  not  to  make  it  soft 
and  comfortable  and  somnolent,  but  to  make  it,  as 
it  were,  a  bed  of  thorns  that  goad  us  more  and 
more  till  we  are  weary  with  forbearing,  and  we  can- 
not stay,  but  rise  up  and  leave  our  bed  in  hell  for 
any  one  who  likes  such  comfort;  we  will  have  none 
of  it. 

So,  then,  the  revelation  of  God,  as  it  is  being 
apprehended  in  its  boundless  range  by  modern 
thought,  is  a  revelation  corresponding  to  the  two- 
fold character  of  Religion,  as  morality  and  piety, 
as  ethics  and  worship.  To  speak  of  ethics  and 
religion  is  a  manifest  absurdity,  if  we  speak  of 
religion  as  an  ideal  good.  For  what  our  wise  and 
noble  Gannett  says  is  true:  "Ethics  thought  out 
is  religious  thought;  ethics  felt  out  is  religious 
feeling;  ethics  lived  out  is  religious  life."  But  to 
speak  of  ethics  and  worship  is  not  disallowed, 
though  ethics  at  its  best  is  worship,  and  worship  at 
its  best  is  fellow-service  consciously  offered  on  the 
altar  of  the  highest  God.  The  pure  and  undefiled 
worship,*  says  the  New  Testament,  is  this:  to  visit 
the  fatherless  and  the  widows  in  their  affliction, 
and  to  keep  unspotted  from  the  world.  But  there 
is  worship  which  is  not  ethical  in  its  first  intention 
which  nevertheless  is  noble,  sweet,  and  good.  It  is 
that  swelling  of  the  heart  and  tears  which  comes 
*The  Greek  word  means  religious  service  or  custom. 


The  Revelation  of  God.  101 

from  contemplation  of  the  vision  of  the  world,  the 
marvelous  order,  symmetry,  and  beauty  of  its 
myriad  parts,  their  high  consenting  unity  to  form 
a  whole  of  awful  and  inspiring  grandeur,  loveliness, 
and  streaming  grace. 

To  such  a  worship  we  are  summoned  by  the  rev- 
elation of  God  in  nature,  not  only  as  it  appeals  to 
our  least  scientific  and  most  spontaneous  apprehen- 
sion, but  also  as  it  is  interpreted  for  us  in  scientific 
terms  by  a  great  company  of  scientific  observers 
and  explorers,  from  height  to  height  of  generali- 
zation rising  to  more  exalted  vision  of  the  world. 
At  the  same  time,  the  revelation  of  God  in  human 
nature  and  in  human  life,  in  the  exigencies  of  our 
social  situation,  in  the  instantaneous  reward  of 
noble  deeds  in  inward  growth,  in  the  penalties  of 
hurt  and  shame  that  wait  on  evil  deeds,  in  the 
alluring  excellence  of  Jesus,  not  fixed  in  monstrous 
isolation,  but  as  one  of  a  great  company  of  high 
and  consecrated  spirits,  in  the  deepest  motions  of 
our  own  spiritual  life,  summons  us  with  a  persua- 
sive and  commanding  and  compelling  voice  to 
deeds  of  fellow-service  and  to  the  cleansing  and 
ennobling  of  our  inmost  hearts,  O  friends,  no  idle 
rhapsody  is  this  which  I  have  read  to  you  to-night! 
If  you  have  heard  aright,  it  has  been  a  trumpet's 
not  uncertain  sound,  arousing  you  to  gladsome  rec- 
ognition of  the  glorious  Revelation  of  the  Living 
God  in  Nature  and  Humanity,  and  to  faithful  ser- 
vice of  all  enterprises  and  ideas  that  make  for 
justice,  truth,  and  love  upon  the  earth,   and    for 


102  The  Revelation  of  God. 

whatever  good  awaits  us  in  that  country  where 
"beyond  these  voices  there  is  peace."  And  seeing 
that  these  things  are  so,  changing  the  words  a  little 
here  and  there  of  the  great  poet's  lyrical  cry  of 
passionate  devotion  to  the  memory  of  the  friend 
whom  he  had  lost,  may  we  not  say  and  sing  to 
the  great  Friend  whom  we  have  found  as  he  was 
never  found  before,  revealed  in  nature  and  human- 
ity?— 

Thy  voice  is  on  the  rolling  air; 

I  hear  Thee  where  the  waters  run; 

Thou  standest  in  the  rising  sun; 
And  in  the  setting  Thou  art  fair. 

What  art  Thou  then?    I  cannot  guess; 

But  though  I  seem  in  star  and  flower 

To  feel  Thee  some  diffusive  power, 
I  do  not  therefore  love  Thee  less. 

My  love  involves  the  love  before; 

My  love  is  vaster  passion  now; 

Though  mixed  with  Man  and  Nature  Thou, 
I  seem  to  love  Thee  more  and  more. 

Far  off  Thou  art,  but  ever  nigh; 

I  have  Thee  still,  and  I  rejoice; 

I  prosper,  circled  by  Thy  voice; 
I  shall  not  lose  Thee,  though  I  die. 


THE  FAITH  OF  ETHICS. 

BY  W.   C.   GANNETT. 

"  Are  there  not  seasons  of  Spring  in  the  moral 
world,  and  is  not  the  present  age  one  of  them?" 
asked  Dr.  Channing  toward  the  end  of  his  life, — 
and  he  died  in  1842.  Doubtless  many  persons  liv- 
ing then  would  have  rather  said,  "It  is  a  season 
of  the  falling  leaf,  the  old  faiths  are  dropping  from 
the  tree,  it  is  November  in  religion."  People  say- 
that  to-day.  I  feel,  instead,  that  Dr.  Channing's 
question  is  pertinent  again:  "Are  there  not  sea- 
sons of  Spring  in  the  moral  and  religious  world,  and 
is  not  the  present  age  one  of  them  ?  There  come 
seasons  when  thoughts  swell  like  buds,  old  mean- 
ings press  out  and  unfold  like  leaves;  seasons  when 
we  either  need  new  words  for  greatening  thoughts, 
or  else  new  meanings,  new  implications,  new  and 
larger  contents  frankly  recognized  in  the  old  words. 
And  I  thihk  the  present  age,  which  some  men  call 
November,  is  such  an  April  in  the  world  of  faith ; 
that  old  words  are  swelling  with  enlarged  meaning, 
and  that  that  is  what's  the  matter :  in  religion 
April's  here! 

The  truth  is  that  our  little  Unitarian  history  in 
America  has  been  one  continuous  April,  with  here 
and  there  a  day  of  halt,  and  here  and  there  some 
special  day  of  freshening  and  forthputtmg.  In 
1810  and  '20,  when  that  history  began  in   Chan- 


]04  The  Faith  of  Ethics. 

ning's  time,  the  words  that  showed  the  April  signs 
were  "Bible,"  " Kevelation,"  "Human  Nature," 
"Salvation,"  "Heaven,"  and  "Hell;"  these  all 
were  swelling  with  new  meaning  then.  In  1840, 
Emerson's  and  Theodore  Parker's  time,  the  swell- 
ing word  was  "  Miracle."  In  1870,  "  National  Con- 
ference" time,  it  was  "Lordship  of  Christ."  In 
1880,  "Year  Book"  time,  it  was  "Christianity." 
In  the  older  Churches  around  ours  it  has  been  a 
slower  Spring,  but  in  all  of  them 

"There  is  a  sound,  there  is  a  token 
That  the  marble  sleep  is  broken, 
And  a  change  has  passed  on  things." 

At  every  crisis  of  the  advancing  change  there  has 
been  a  stir,  a  trouble,  a  pause, — Nature  getting 
ready  for  violets,  March  a  little  strenuous  that  it 
is  not  yet  time  for  violets,  and  that  violets  are  safer 
anyway  as  roots  in  the  ground  than  as  blossoms  out 
in  the  light, — and  then,  somehow,  March  is  April, 
and  April  is  May,  and  the  violets  are  here !  How 
beautiful  within  our  lifetime  the  fields  of  religious 
thought  have  grown  with  them!  From  one  specific 
Bible  as  the  root,  generic  Scripture  has  sprung  up, 
— and  the  world  is  glad.  In  place  of  Revelation  as 
an  event.  Revelation  as  a  process  is  discerned, — 
and  the  world  is  glad.  In  place  of  Human  Nature 
of  the  worms  wormy.  Human  Nature  with  seeds 
and  sparkles  of  divinity  in  it, — and  the  world  is 
glad.  Instead  of  Miracle  as  a  Jdnd  of  heavenly 
coup  (VMat^  rare  and  risky  like  earthly  coups  d'^.tat, 
Miracle  as  another  name  for  Nature's  every  result, 


The  Faith  of  Ethics.  105 

her  least  thing  that,— and  the  world  is  glad.  For 
Lordship  of  Christ,  the  recognition  that  great  men 
are  seen  greatest  bare  of  title.  For  the  name 
"Christianity"  used  as  a  shibboleth  of  fellowship, 
the  recognition  that  the  spirit  of  Christianity 
is  the  only  thing  worth  fellowship,  and  that 
that  is  a  fellowship  no  man  and  no  name  can 
confer,  and  that  no  man  at  his  best  will  try  to 
deny;  and  the  world  is  growing  glad  at  that.  In 
each  case  the  larger  meaning  in  the  old  word  has 
made  the  word  more  beautiful. 

I  think  this  April  process  has  now  reached  words 
more  important  than  any  I  have  named;  that  to-day 
"  God,"  "Eeligion,"  "  Ethics,"  are  the  words  swell- 
ing with  new  meanings,  which  will  unfold  them  in 
the  same  way  to  something  larger,  more  forceful, 
more  beautiful, — and  that  the  world  will  again  be 
glad.  The  Faith  of  Ethics  is  my  subject;  and  this 
phrase,"Faith  of  Ethics,"opened,will  illustrate  what 
I  mean.  I  shall  only  word  thoughts  that  are  slowly 
taking  shape  in  many  of  us.  "  Faith  "  is  a  word  of 
religion;  and  this  thing  that  we  call  "morals"  or 
"  ethics  "  is  going  to  unfold  itself  as  more  vitally 
"religious,"  by  its  deepest  elements  more  vitally 
religious,  than  men  have  yet  seen  to  be  the  fact. 
A  great  deal  has  recently  been  said  among  us  that 
brings  to  mind  the  word  of  Emerson,  "  Men  talk 
of  mere  morality,  which  is  much  as  if  one  should 
say,  '  Poor  God,  with  nobody  to  help  him! '  "  But 
another  word  of  Emerson,  that  prophecy  he  so  oft 
repeated,  is  also  coming  true  before  our  eyes:  "The 


106       .  The  Faith  of  Ethics. 

progress  of  religion  is  steadily  to  its  identity  with 
morals."  .  .  "  The  next  age  will  behold  God  in  the 
ethical  laws."  It  is  this  tendency  of  which  many 
of  us  to-day  are  growing  conscious  in  our  thought. 
And  this  process,  note  you,  is  not  November  for  the 
meaning  of  "  religion," — it  is  April  for  the  mean- 
ing of  "ethics."  The  term  religion  is  not  shrink- 
ing; it  is  the  term  ethics  that  is  swelling. 


How  is  it  with  you  and  me  ?  Suppose  your  boy 
or  your  little  brother,  twelve  years  old,  should  ask 
you  of  a  sudden,  "  What  is  the  difference  between 
morals  and  religion  ?  Is  there  any  ?  " — what  would 
you  say  ?  I  wonder  if  I  cannot  put  your  answer 
into  words.  You  would  say  something  about  duties 
to  man  as  contrasted  with  duties  to  God,  and  feel- 
ings towards  man  in  contrast  with  feelings  towards 
God.  "  Morality,"  you  might  say,  refers  to  the 
good  of  fellow- men;  "religion"  deals  with  the 
central  power  behind  all  Nature  and  events.  Jus- 
tice and  helpfulness  are  the  great  words  of  the 
first;  reverence,  worship,  the  great  words  of  the 
second.  There  is  a  first  and  a  second  command- 
ment, "like  unto"  each  other,  but  one  is  religion, 
— "Thou  shalt  love  the  Lord  thy  God;"  the  other 
is  morals, — "Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbor  as  thy- 
self." The  angels'  song  was  a  two -line  song, 
"Glory  to  God  in  the  highest," — religion;  "On 
earth,  peace,  good -^vill  among  men," — morality. 

But  we  must  let  out  these   definitions  a  little 


The  Faith  of  Ethics.  107 

more.  What  do  we  mean  by  morality?  Honesty; 
truthfulness;  justice;  the  give-and-take  of  bargains; 
the  live-and-let-live  of  reciprocated  rights;  the 
every- day  courtesies  and  generosities;  the  dues  of 
tenderness  and  mercy  to  those  dependent  on  us, 
the  dues  of  charity  to  those  a  little  more  remote, 
the  dues  of  neighborhood  lessening  as  the  circle 
widens; — this  is  "  morals."  But  reverence,  aspira- 
tion, devotion  to  supreme  ideals;  self-sacrifice  that 
prefers  death  to  inward  dishonor,  and  counts  risk, 
pain,  or  the  death  cheap  price  for  privilege  of  ren- 
dering mankind  service;  that  high  loyalty  which 
makes  a  man  stand  one  against  a  world,  and  feel 
that  the  standing  there  allies  him  with  Strength 
that  is  eternal ;  the  bowed  awe  of  the  soul  before  a 
naked  duty,  awe  turning  to  delight  and  peace  as 
the  soul  enwraps  and  becomes  that  duty  done, — 
what  do  we  call  all  this  ?  All  this  belonss  to  the 
religious  rather  than  the  moral  life,  as  men  usually 
divide  the  words.  On  one  side,  the  economic  and 
prudential  virtues;  that  which  keeps  the  peace, 
and  underlies  the  structure  of  society,  and  pioneers 
civilization,  and  gradually  embodies  itself  in  laws 
and  constitutions,  and  promotes  man  to  be  the  cit- 
izen, and  refines  the  state  into  the  commonwealth 
— this  on  the  one  side;  it  is  morals.  And  on  the 
other  side,  all  the  central  facts  of  the  soul's  life, — 
the  sense  of  obligation  to  act  according  to  seen 
ideals,  the  sense  of  sin  for  non-fulfilled  ideals,  the 
sense  of  aspiration  for  unfulfillable  ideals;  the 
flame  of  indignation  against  strong-handed  wrong 


108  The  Faith  of  Ethics. 

in  others,  and  the  flame  of  admiration  and  delight 
for  the  struggling  right  in  others;  so  much  of 
morals  as  has  a  stir  and  a  thrill  and  a  passion  to 
it;  all  of  it  that  looks  out  on  a  rimless  good,  all 
that  prompts  the  heroic  rather  than  the  orderly, 
prompts  enthusiasms  rather  than  seen  utilities; 
and  all  that  working  of  the  spiritual  elements  in 
us  which  gives  cheer  in  trial,  quiet  in  sorrow,'  pa- 
tience in  strain,  trust  during  long  triumphs  of  the 
wronff, — all  this  is  on  the  other  side:  it  is  "re- 
ligion." 

Have  I  not  spoken  your  thought,  or  something 
like  your  thought,  for  you  ? 

Now  I  do  not  know  that  I  can  prove  anything 
against  such  separation  of  the  two  words.  Per- 
haps I  can  only  show  that  to  my  seeing  there  is  no 
separation,  that  it  all  joins  on.  You  noticed  my 
trouble, — that  I  had  to  describe  several  of  those 
so-called  "religious"  experiences  in  terms  of  "mo- 
rality;" and  you  may  have  felt  of  some  of  them 
that  they  belonged  rather  in  the  other,  in  the 
moral  list.  So  they  do;  but  there,  under  religion, 
too ;  and  I  believe  I  am  but  following  copy  in  class- 
ing them  as  I  did  among  the  things  religious. 
Where  then  does  the  boundary  line  fall  ?  Where 
does  "morality"  end,  and  "religion"  begin?  All 
that  description  of  religion  seems  to  be  simply  a 
description  of  the  wider  and  the  inner  reaches  of 
morality.  Of  the  wider  and  the  inner  reaches  of 
morality:  the  "moral  "  sentiment erctended  and  in- 


The  Faith  of  Ethics.  109 

tended,  becomes  "  religious  "  sentiment.     Is  it  not 
all  a  question  of  horizons  ? 

To  judge  if  it  be  not,  will  you  look,  first,  at  the 
mystic  element  in  every  simplest  Ought ;  and,  then, 
at  the  mystic  element  in  our  deeper,  more  com- 
plex, spiritual  experiences?  And  lastly,  in  the 
light  of  what  we  see  by  these  two  looks,  let  us  face 
the  thought  of  God. 

The  Ought.  In  the  mystic  element  in  every 
simplest  perception  of  the  Ought  I  feel  a  "  faith," 
the  Faith  of  Ethics.  I  am  not  wise  to  know,  per- 
haps none  is,  the  source  and  nature  of  this  famil- 
iar obligation.  It  may  be  the  instant's  intuition 
seen  by  some  spirit- eyes  in  us,  a  voice  heard  by 
some  spirit-ear;  or  it  may  be  a  slow-gathering  in- 
stinct of  the  race  handed  down  the  generations; 
or  it  may  be  some  swift  sub-conscious  calculation 
of  utility;  or  it  may  be  all  of  these.  That  the 
theories  contradict  each  other,  I  do  not  see;  rather 
they  seem  to  almost  necessarily  involve  each  other. 
But  whatever  be  its  origin,  hei'e  it  is  in  us,  a  mystic 
obligation,  a  thing  that  haunts  us  with  hints  and 
vanishes  of  power  supreme  and  absolute.  It  com- 
mands! and  what  is  more,  its  command  enters  into 
every  conscious  deed.  There  is  not  a  deed  unhaunted 
by  this  omnipresent  imp— a  little  Ought.  I  am 
debating,  alone  with  myself,  whether  I  will  go  into 
some  new  business  or  remain  in  some  old  business 
which  affects  the  community  thus  and  so;  the 
Ought  is  there  with  me, — it  is  the  other  debater. 


110  The  Faith  of  Ethics. 

My  neighbor  and  I  are  bargaining,  we  two  together, 
no  one  else;  the  Ought  is  superintending  both 
sides  of  that  bargain.  A  hundred  men  are  con- 
cerned in  a  deed;  the  Ought  is  in  them  all,  de- 
termining the  precise  relation  of  each  one  to  that 
deed.  It  is  no  more  an  Ought  because,  instead  of 
two,  a  hundred  are  involved.  But  again,  instead 
of  the  hundred  men,  a  state  is  concerned  in  the 
deed,  a  nation  in  the  action, — it  is  the  question  of 
slavery  perhaps,  or  of  the  Indians,  or  of  the  Chi- 
nese in  America;  or  not  one  state,  but  two  con- 
tinents are  in  danger, — it  is  some  question  of  war: 
the  Ought  is  still  supreme  and  there  !  The  horizon 
is  spreading,  but  the  Ought  is  no  more  strong,  no 
more  mystic,  than  when  it  simply  said  to  one  man 
in  one  deed,  "Thou  shalt,"  or  "Thou  shalt  not." 
And  let  that  horizon  spread  to  other  worlds,  to 
other  lives,  to  other  orders  of  being,  we  cannot 
conceive  the  Ought  deciding  on  essentially  unlike 
principles  in  farthest  spaces  or  in  farthest  times. 
The  relations  known  as  Justice,  Truth,  Love — we 
are  haunted  with  conviction  of  it — are  always, 
everywhere.  Justice,  Truth,  Love. — Siu-ely  this  is 
faith:  it  is  the  "Faith  of  Ethics."  Yet  all  that 
greatness  joins  right  on,  haloes  right  around,  the 
littlest  Ought  in  the  littlest  deed.  Only  an  infinite 
Ought  can  explain  that  littlest  Ought.  Or  rather, 
the  infinite  Ought  does  not  a  whit  explain,  and,  if 
it  did,  would  itself  just  as  much  await  the  explana- 
tion; it  expands,  but  it  does  not  explain.  The 
little  Ought  is  the  infinite  Ought  there  and  then. 


The  Faith  of  Ethics.  Ill 

There  is  no  little  and  big  in  Ought,  any  more  than 
there  is  little  and  big  in  gravitation.  Here  in  the 
drop  of  the  pebble  is  the  absolute  gravitation,  the 
whole  law  of  it  acting;  here  in  the  smallest  duty  of 
the  moment  is  the  absolute  Ought,  the  whole  law  of 
it  acting.  Faraday  said,  "A  grain  of  water  is 
known  to  have  electric  relations  equivalent  to  a 
very  powerful  flash  of  lightning;  "  so  the  smallest 
deed  has  moral  relations  equivalent  to  an  instant 
of  a  Judgment  Day ! 

Now  tell  me,  if  you  can:  this  faith  in  an  infinite 
element  entering  into  the  smallest  duty,  this  faith 
that  a  law  of  Right  which  presides  at  the  birth  of 
the  worlds  is  holding  and  playing  and  presiding  be- 
tween the  mixed  motives  in  a  little  child's  breast, — 
this  thought,  this  fact  as  it  surely  seems  to  us, — 
tell  me,  if  you  can,  which  is  it,  a  faith  of  "moral- 
ity," or  a  faith  of  "religion?"  If  any  faith  can  be 
"religious"  faith,  this  belongs  to  that  order.  And 
yet  I  have  simply  spoken  of  the  very  smallest  duty. 
It  is  a  question  of  horizons,  I  said.  Take  your 
start  from  that  bargain  between  the  two  men, — 
"mere  morality,"  if  anything  can  be  so  called: 
start  from  that  bargain  and  think  outwards,  out- 
wards, that  the  equations  of  justice  between  the 
traders  apply  between  the  nations  and  the  races, — 
and  we  begin  to  feel  the  thrill  we  call  "  religious!  " 
The  horizons  have  opened!  Or  take  your  start 
from  the  bargain  and  think  inwards,  inwards,  of 
the  fact  that  a  universal  law  is  actually,  tangibly 
pressing  in  the  silences  within  each  trader's  self, 


112  The  Faith  of  Ethics. 

exacting  justice  of  him  there,  so  that  their  five- 
cent  chaffer  at  the  street-comer  has  something  in- 
finite about  it  through  its  quality  of  honesty  or 
dishonesty!  Start  from  the  crimson  on  the  little 
child's  face  as  he  tells  his  first  untruth,  or  fii'st 
consciously  bruises  his  mother's  love,  and  think  in- 
wards to  what  that  crimson  banners  out,  this 
namely,  that  the  justice  of  the  universe  is  mar- 
shalling its  hosts  within  that  baby's  conscience; — 
and  again  we  feel  the  thrill  we  call  "religious." 
The  horizons  have  opened ! 

Take  a  smaller  thing  than  a  baby's  blush.  Start 
from  so  seeming-slight  a  thing  as  a  mere  tone  in  a 
word;  that  cold  tone  in  which  you  consciously  an- 
swered your  wife  or  child  this  morning.  It  hurt 
them;  but  what  makes  it  hui-t  you  now,  as  you 
walk  down  town  ?  What  makes  it  haunt  you  with 
its  echoes  so  really  that  perhaps  you  will  hear  that 
tone  years  hence,  with  pain  so  bitter  you  would 
give  a  year  off  life  could  you  but  unpronounce  it  ? 
A  mere  tone  in  a  word!  Such  memories  have 
been.  Start  from  this,  and  think,  think  inwards, 
about  the  sources  of  that  pain, — and  we  find  our- 
selves in  worlds  where  time  changes  to  eternity, 
and  relative  to  absolute !  The  horizons  have  opened ! 

In  other  words,  if  we  insist  on  dividing  between 
morality  and  religion,  truly  it  seems  as  if  the  di- 
vision must  proceed  on  some  very  outward  surface 
of  the  things  concerned.  Morality  has  to  do  with 
the  relations  between  men,  we  say:  but  the  moment 
we  begin  to  think  into  the  smallest  of  these  social 


The  Faith  of  Ethics.  113 

relations,  we  find  the  moral  element  in  it  circling 
out  and  out,  and  in  and  in,  until  "  religion  "  be- 
comes the  only  natural  word  with  which  to  speak 
oui'  recognition  of  it.  But  that  infinite  horizon 
was  of  course  there  all  the  time, — only  we  were 
thoughtless  of  it.  The  religion  is  in  the  morality 
all  the  time, — only  we  are  thoughtless  of  it.  Does 
it  not,  then,  come  to  this,  which  is  the  one  refrain 
I  wish  you  would  cany  home  with  you  to  think 
over  and  see  if  it  be  not  time, — ^^  Ethics, ^^  thought 
out,  is  ^^ religious ^^  thought;  Ethics,  felt  out,  is 
religious  feeling ;  Ethics,  lived  out,  is  religious  life  f 

Now  take  that  second  and  deeper  inlook  that  I 
asked  for.  If  something  like  a  rimless  world  be- 
gins to  loom  upon  us  when  looking  at  *any  littlest 
action  with  its  littlest  Ought,  still  more  we  feel  the 
opening  of  moral  horizons,  the  religious  sweep  of 
ethics,  when  we  look  at  the  more  complex  experi- 
ences of  the  soul.  The  "Faith  of  Ethics,"— the 
phrase  begins  to  glow  as  if  a  sun  passed  inside  of 
it,  when  we  think  of  that  ethical  drama  for  which 
every  soul  fiuTiishes  theatre  and  stock  company, — 
the  drama  we  call  Sin.  Sin  with  its  first  act,  dis- 
loyalty to  Ought ;  sin  with  its  second  act,  pain, — 
the  soul's  only  real  pain,  the  ache  of  shame;  sin 
with  its  third  act,  repentance;  in  its  fourth  act,  re- 
turn, reunion,  peace.  It  is  the  drama  Jesus  told 
out  in  his  story  of  the  good  father  and  the  prodi- 
gal boy  and  his  welcome  back  to  the  home.  Is 
that  a  "  moral  "  or  a  "  religious  "  story, — the  story 


114  The  Faith  of  Ethics. 

of  the  prodigal  son  ?  And  at  the  Pacific  Garden 
Mission  in  West  Chicago,  is  it  a  moral  or  a  religious 
drama  that  is  being  acted  out  in  the  breasts  of 
twenty  men  and  women,  rough  men,  rough  women, 
every  Sunday  night?  They  call  it  "religious," 
there.  So  it  is.  How  Jesus  would  have  stared  at 
our  question,— "Moral  or  religious?"  But,  after 
staring,  I  think  he  would  have  given  an  answer 
that  would  make  us  feel  that  "  moral" — and  it  as 
surely  is  a  moral  drama — that  "  moral "  is  about 
the  most  "religious"  word  that  ever  slipped  be- 
tween two  holy  lips. 

Or,  instead  of  Sin,  to  see  what  the  expression 
"Faith  of  Ethics"  hints,  think,  think  out,  what  all 
those  processes  of  spiritual  chemistry  imply  which 
we  call  discipline, — discipline  by  difficulty,  by  dis- 
appointment, by  suffering,  by  soiTow;  that  spiritual 
chemistry  of  which  Jesus'  Beatitudes  are  but  a 
few  of  the  formulas.  Spiritual  chemistry  as  con- 
stant in  its  action,  as  sui'e  in  its  laws,  as  universal 
in  each  life,  as  the  circulation  of  the  blood  and  the 
chemistry  of  physical  digestion  are  sure  and  con- 
stant within  the  human  body.  Difficulty  which 
nerves  our  will,  disappointment  which  teaches  pa- 
tience, suffering  which  gives  us  sympathies,  sorrow 
which  transmutes  itself  to  trusts  such  as  we  never 
had  before ;  and  all  these  hard  experiences  of  strain 
and  pain  and  loss  and  death  working  together  in  us 
to  awake  a  sense  of  deathlessness,  and  a  sense  of 
trust  in  an  eternal  righteousness!  Think  of  it, 
friends,  -these  are  the  spiritual  realities  happening 


The  Faith  of  Ethics.  115 

all  the  time,  never  not  happening,  in  every  soul  in 
your  city,  in  every  soul  on  this  tiny  earth  of  ours,  in 
every  soul  through  the  wide  heavens.  Spiritual,  I 
say.  Realities,  I  say.  Flesh  and  bone,  rocks  and 
trees,  not  more  real,  not  so  deeply  real. — Well,  is  it 
"moral"  or  "religious,"  all  this  that  happens? 
Moral,  surely,  as  all  the  words  used  show;  yet,  as 
we  think  of  them  in  this  solemn,  searching  way,  the 
rims  of  all  the  words  expand,  the  thrill  begins,  the 
over-awing  drops  on  us,  and  we  are  in  the  realm 
the  word- dividers  call  "  religious."  Indeed  we  are! 
It  all  joins  on. 

Shall  I  speak  of  that  still  more  mystical  experi- 
ence, rarer  to  full  consciousness,  but  none  the  less 
forever  going  on,  I  cannot  doubt,  in  our  sub-con- 
sciousness, or  super-consciousness,- — the  experience 
which  we  call  Worship,  Prayer,  Communion  with 
the  Highest,  and  which,  whatever  we  call  it,  is  a 
sense  as  if  we  joined  ourselves  to  that  which  is  all- 
strong,  all-endui'ing,  all-righteous  ?  Here  at  least, 
one  says,  you  touch  "religion."  Yes,  but  not 
one  whit  more  really  than  we  touched  it  in  our  ex- 
perience of  sin  or  of  that  pain-wrought  sweetness. 
Not  more  reaUy,  though  now  more  consciously. 
That  is  to  say,  this  experience  of  sharing  in  All- 
mighty  Power  and  Right  is  "  moral "  experience  too, 
is  intensely  moral;  and  because  so  intensely  moral, 
the  horizons  are  already  circling  wide  before  us,  and 
we  say,  below  our  breath,  "This  is  religion!" 

Ah,  if  we  but  deeply  felt  the  realities  of  our 
spirit's  common  life  when  we  are  not  "  at  prayer," 


116  The  Faith  of  Ethics. 

we  should  know  they  all  were  to  be  called  religion, 
because  these  realities  all  presuppose,  involve,  the 
same  eternal  forces.  Thanks  to  science,  we  realize 
to-day  that  oiu'  body  is  really  taken  hold  of  by  the 
sun,  that  gravitation  grasps  us,  that  the  world  mag 
nets  draw  us,  that  the  climates  enter  into  us.  As 
really,  the  forces  we  call  moral,  spiritual,  enclose  us, 
pervade  us,  bind  us,  fill  us,  shape  us.  It  is  ivorld- 
force  that  binds  us  to  justice  in  our  bargain.  It  is 
world-force,  the  peace  that  passes  understanding. 
It  is  world- force,  the  shame  that  crimsons  us; 
world-force,  that  links  wrong  to  doom  and  right  to 
joy  in  men  and  nations;  world-force,  that  draws  us 
up  in  prayer  up-reachings;  world- force,  that  sends 
the  Ought-current  through  our  every  act,  that  thrills 
us  with  sympathies,  that  glows  in  us  when  we 
think  an  heroic  thought;  world-force,  that  nails  us, 
willing,  to  a  cross!  The  reality  of  this  who  more 
than  begins  to  feel  ?  Yet  that  mere  beginning  be- 
comes evidence  to  consciousness  of  bonds  between 
each  spirit  and  all  spirits,  and  of  union  of  all  spirits 
in  Spuit  Absolute.  What  word  for  this  mighty 
faith?  It  is  but  "morals."  Try  again:  it  is  "re- 
ligion!" Try  again:  it  is  conviction  that  the  two 
are  very  one. 

Yes,  one.  It  is  the  "religious"  faith;  for  re- 
ligion is  man's  sense  of  universal  relations,  however 
the  universe,  or  man's  relation  to  it,  be  conceived. 
Whatever  thought  or  feeling  in  us  reaches  out  and 
claims  a  universal  scope,  thereby  becomes  "  relig- 
ious."    Hence  Science,  dealing  with  the  True,  is 


The  Faith  of  Ethics.  UT 

religious  in  its  outcome,  cannot  be  otherwise;  fur 
it  affii'ms  the  cosmic  order,  universal  laws,  the  One 
in  all.  Hence  .3ilsthetics,  dealing  with  the  Beauti- 
ful, is  religious  in  its  outcome, — can  not  be  other- 
wise; for  Beauty  is  the  sense  of  cosmic  order  con- 
centred in  individual  objects  and  radiating  thence 
again.  And,  in  the  same  way.  Ethics,  that  which 
deals  with  the  Right  and  Good,  is  religious  in  its 
outcome,  cannot  be  otherwise;  for  it  once  more 
affirms  the  cosmic  order,  affirms  relations  absolute 
and  everywhere  the  same. 

So  I  I'epeat  my  refrain:  "Ethics",  thought  om?, 
is  "  religious  '*  thought;  Ethics,  feltow^,  is  religious 
feeling;  Ethics,  lived  out,  is  religious  life. 

There — it  is  only  a  hint,  but  something  like  this 
that  I  have  hinted  is  the  "Faith  of  Ethics  ".  Have  I 
made  the  great  thought  at  all  plain  ?  If  so,  I  know 
you  feel  its  majesty ;  and  will  begin  to  feel  with  me 
tliat  all  that  talk  that  di\ddes  morality  from  religion 
by  saying  of  religion,  "It  is  something  ??i07'e  than 
morality,"  instead  of  saying  "  It  is  something  more 
in  morality  than  is  usually  seen," — and  all  that 
other  talk  which  mistakes  mere  doctrine  for  religion, 
and,  casting  out  the  doctrine,  says,  "  Give  us  only 
morals," — that  all  such  talk,  in  either  kind,  is  close 
akin  to  that  worse  talk  which  speaks  of  "  mere 
morality"  and  "rags  of  righteousness;"  and  that 
the  common  thought  of  morals  as  that  which  deals 
with  simply  sztr/ace  relations  of  society  and  out- 
ward conduct,  and  which  has  no  root  in  absolute. 


118  The  Faith  of  Ethics, 

eternal  life-principles,  is  really -thoughtlessness.  It 
is  the  irreligiousness,  it  is  the  unraorality,  in  us 
which  speaks  so.  The  trouble  with  this  greater 
thought,  that  the  Faith  of  Ethics  is  the  very  heart 
and  essence  of  religion,  is  that  it  is  too  great  for  us 
to  realize.  Friends,  we  are  afraid  of  believing  so 
much!  As  we  turn  away  from  it,  the  words,  "O  ye 
of  little  faith ! "  sound  after  us.  It  makes  the  awful 
Powers  too  near!  It  makes  the  common-places  of 
our  life  so  infinite!  Which  is  what  the  common- 
places are,  when  realized, — the  infinites  of  life. 

But  what  of  the  thought  of  God  under  this  con- 
ception of  the  Faith  of  Ethics  ? 

Some  good  men,  you  know,  stifle  religion  with 
Chi-istianity,  or  stifle  their  Chi'istianity  with  the  ism 
of  their  sect:  and  when  one  insists  on  "something 
more  than  morality,"  namely,  belief  in  God,  as  es- 
sential to  religion,  I  confess  I  feel  a  little  stifled  by 
such  theism, — such  theisticism.  Say  that  this  mor- 
ality, so  realized  in  its  awful  nature  and  its  awful 
sweep,  is  the  theism  in  a  man — a  theism  at  first 
almost  unconscious,  and  then  more  conscious,  and 
ever  more  and  more  conscious  as  he  grows  to  realize 
its  meaning, — say  this,  and  I  begin  to  feel  kindled* 
inspired,  by  that  word  God!  "  AVhat!  already  touch- 
ing God  in  this  small  deed  of  mine,  in  this  mere 
tone  in  a  word  of  mine?  "  Yes! — That  astonishes, 
that  is  sunrise!  I  see  then  that  "God"  is  not 
niched  anywhere,  nor  massed  anywhere,  nor  throned 
anywhere,   but  is  heavened  everywhere    because 


The  Faith  of  Ethics.  119 

heavened  in  the  Ought;  and  of  coiuse  "  the  kingdom 
of  heaven  is  at  hand," — where  else  ?  But  even  if  I 
lose  all  so-called  "  God"  by  the  inability,  I  am  not 
able  to  think  a  God -for  whom  to  care— for  whom 
to  care,  I  say — separate  from,  beyond,  outside  of 
this  I  have  been  speaking  of.  Every  inch  of  this 
morality  has  been  religion.  Every  inch  of  it  has 
involved,  incorporated,  that  Power  with  which  the 
others,  who  talk  of  "mere  morality,"  top  their 
moral  structure  and  bound  their  moral  horizon. 
You  and  I  have  looked  together  at  morality  enter- 
ing as  infinite  and  absolute  element  in  eveiy  act  we 
do,  in  every  experience  of  the  soul.  Each  and 
every  time,  wherever  we  have  gazed,  the  horizons 
have  opened  wider,  wider.  To  such  conception 
there  is  no  rim,  no  top,  no  bound,  and  no  beyond. 
I  gain  no  explanation  of  morality,  then,  by  saying 
"  God."  I  am  but  saying  more  intensely,  "  Infinite 
Morality."  I  gain  no  sanction  for  it.  I  gain  no 
source  or  root  or  end  to  it.  In  the  great  reforms 
they  used  to  quote  the  Bible:  but  did  the  Bible - 
text  make  slavery  wrong,  or  did  the  wrong  of  slav- 
ery make  the  Bible-text  ?  Did  Jesus  confer  sanc- 
tion on  the  "Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbor  as 
thyself  "  and  "  Thou  shalt  bless  thy  enemy,"— or  did 
the  perception  of  these  shalts  sanction,  aye,  create 
the  very  Jesus  ?  Even  so  with  the  thought  of  God ; 
the  right  creates  and  sanctions,  not  indeed  that 
thought  entire,  but  all  of  it  that  we  most  value,  al  I 
that  makes  us  worship;  that  thought  does  not 
create  and  sanction  Right.     By  saying  "  God  "  we 


]  20  The  Faith  of  Ethics. 

background  moral  law  on  Nature,  we  say  that 
the  Law  is  real,  is  alive,  acts.  Nature  conceived  as 
moral  through  and  through,  from  play  of  atoms  to 
heart's  love  and  a  Christ  upon  a  cross,  is  the  God 
we  worship.  Duty  does  not  point,  then,  to  Deity 
as  to  something  outside  of  itself:  that  Ought  with- 
in is  the  very  voice,  face,  force  of  Deity  present. 
Deity  urgent.  Deity  declaring  in  us  ever, — "  I  am  the 
way,  the  truth,  the  life!"  Enstructured  is  the 
word:  that  Living  Law  is  enstructured  in  the  very 
nature  of  man, — and  the  nature  of  man  is  the  na- 
ture of  things.  The  nature  of  man  is  the  nature  of 
things!  The  universe  is  one.  That  in  you  which 
thinks,  that  in  you  which  loves,  that  in  you  which 
makes  the  hard  duty  easy,  that  in  a  man  which 
makes  it  luxury  to  die  that  the  Right  may  live  in- 
violate,— that  is  the  moral  nature  of  things  en- 
structured in  you !  To  see  this  is  to  make  the  great 
recognition  of  "  God."  To  help  others  to  see  it  is 
to  make  the  great  interpretation  of  "  God." 

Conceived  in  this  way,  the  Faith  of  Ethics  makes 
"  God  "  the  intensely  real.  It  mixes  his  very  life 
with  youi's  and  mine.  It  makes  him  the  Inevita- 
ble, as  simply  inevitable  as  the  Ought.  It  leaves  no 
instant  of  our  life  free  from  him.  If  not  with  us 
as  Ought,  then  with  us  as  Ought-Not.  If  not  with 
us  as  light  upon  our  path,  then  with  us  as  trust  in 
the  dark  path.  If  not  with  us  as  joy  and  the  sense 
of  power,  then  with  us  as  doom  and  the  sense  of 
distance,  disaster,  break- down.  Yes,  blackening 
sinner  and  white  saint  alike  bear  witness  to  the 


The  Faith  of  Ethics.  121 

Moral  Law,  self-enacting,  sovereign,  in  man.  And 
what  is  History  biit  human  life  writ  large  ?  In  dooms 
and  exaltations  of  the  nations,  and  in  the  human 
tendency  toward  happier  and  richer  life  as  the 
centuries  grow  kind  and  Christ's  Beatitudes  be- 
come organic  instincts  of  the  race,  History  echoes 
and  re-echoes  verdicts  of  the  Moral  Law.  Ever 
with  us,  in  us,  of  us, — the  Majesty  of  Living  Right? 
the  God! 

And  is  this  Moral  Law,  this  Living  Eight  in 
thinsrs,    a   law  of   Lovef    Answer,    Heart    vnthin! 
If  in  thee  the  Moral  Law  eventuates  and  flowers  in 
Love,  if  always  in  thyself  the  solemn  Bight  strains 
toward  self-sacrifice  and   self-forgetfulness,    then 
everywhere  and  everywhen  the  Right  tends  Love- 
wards. — TF/i?/ everywhere  ?     Because  the  universe 
is  One.     Because  "  the  Power,  not  ourselves,  that 
makes  for  righteousness"  is  all  as  truly  Power  that 
is  oui"  very  self;  and,  by  self's  attestation,  in  mak- 
ing for  the   "righteousness"  it  makes  for  Love. 
Law  that  is  not  everywhere  in  Nature  is  nowhere. 
The  statutes  of   the  nations   have  their  bounds; 
statutes  of    the  universe  have  none.     The  Moral 
Law  is  not  one  law  within  the  chemistries  of  human 
souls  and  a  different  law  within  the  chemistries  of 
flowers  and  stars,  one  law  in  children's  laughter  and 
another  law  in  tragedies  and  deaths.     The  strain 
must  ever  be  the  same.     In  one  place,  self,  we 
know  what  that  strain  is:  then  it  is  ever  toward 
Beatitudes  of  Friendliness. 


122  The  Faith  of  Ethics. 

And  still  one  question  yearns:  "Can  this  Be- 
friending Power  bear  a  tenderer  name  ?  Can  we 
without  unreason  call  it  '  Father,'  and  lean  on  it  as 
One  who  cares  ?  Is  it  *  Love,'  not  merely  in  result, 
but  in  its  very  source?  " 

No  answer  to  such  question,  if  not  in  these  same 
deeps  within  ourselves.  And  as  we  listen  "in  our- 
selves for  answer,  the  word  "Love"  opens  in  trans- 
figui-ed  meanings,  till  it  almost  seems  belittlement 
to  use  our  dearest  and  intensest  word  to  phrase  the 
consciousness  that  one  must  speak  of.  If  I  read 
our  trust-experience  aright,  it  is  a  sense  of  resting 
child- wise  on  Parental  Care;  and  yet  it  is  still 
more  the  sense  of  being  part  of  a  mighty  stream  of 
Love ;  by  it  borne  on  to  ends  its  own, — ours,  too, 
so  far  as  our  ends  are  its  own.  It  is  a  sense  of 
care  for  me,  yet  rather  of  care  with  me, — ^with  me, 
down  to  the  last  details  of  all  I  do  or  bear.  I 
think  I  feel  it  most  as  care  for  me,  when  I  am 
weak  in  faith,  or  weak  in  will,  to  clasp  some  Eight 
which  yet  I  seej  for  then  I  am  separate  enough 
from  that  which  makes  for  Eight  to  feel  it  as  Power 
apart  from  self, — Power  within  me,  that  is  seeking, 
thwarting,  leading  me.  This  is  the  lower  feeling. 
When  I  am  strong  in  faith  and  will  to  clasp  the 
Eight  and  make  it  mine,  the  separateness  lessens, 
till  the  sense  even  of  dependence  seems  lost  in 
sense  of  loyalty,  and  I  am  one  with  the  Strength  I 
lean  on  and  obey.  This  is  the  higher  feeling. 
Eare  the  hours,  perhaps,  when  we  ascend  to  it. 
But  this  mystic  sense — at  once  dependence,  loyalty, 


TJw  Faith  of  Ethics.  128 

unity — the  right  life  daily  deepens  for  us,  if  we 
will.  Law,  Love,  Life,  these  three;  and  it  is  the 
righteous  Life  which  unifies  the  other  two  in  con- 
sciousness. God-being,  within  our  tiny  limits,  is 
the  imperious  and  blessed  law  of  God-finding. 
No  peace  or  strength  or  inspiration  like  the  feeling 
that  I  mean. — But  let  this  feeling  once  be  felt,  and 
then  the  question,  *'  Is  the  Power,  working  thus 
within  us,  'Love,'  or  is  it  a  'Lover?'"  seems 
past  the  asking.  It  is  Love  we  know,  the  Love 
we  realize,  the  Love  we  care  about ;  yet  as  our 
minds  can  think  Love  only  as  a  radiance  of  Lovers, 
the  Power  shapes  itself  before  thought  as  "the 
Father."  Thus  to  the  conceiving  mind;  but  in  the 
experience  itself,  when  this  Lover  grows  most  real 
he  vanishes  again  into  the  Love.  He  vanishes  ?  or 
is  it  ice  who  vanish?  We  only  know  the  Great 
Heart  throbbing  thorugh  us,  its  Life  translating 
itself  to  "personality"  in  ours.  Tell  who  can 
whether  it  be  His  or  ours! 

But  as  to  name,  let  none  who  feel  that  its  inade- 
quacy stabs  truth  say  "  Love,"  or  "  God,"  or 
"Father."  Let  such  keep  silence;  and  let  their 
silence  be  revered  as  reverence  by  those  who  find 
the  very  poverty  of  words  less  poor  than 
silence  to  voice  their  sense  of  the  Mystery  and 
Blessedness.  As  reverently  let  those  who  choose 
the  silence  bear  with  those  who  break  it.  Most 
certainly  the  One  that  moves  within  the  crys- 
tallizing atoms  as  well  as  in  the  rhythms  of 
History,  within  the  shining  suns  as  well  as  in  the 


124  The  Faith  of  Ethics. 

Light  that  lighteth  every  man, — most  certainly  this 
Omnipresent,  Moral  Energy  is  not  a  mighty  Pa- 
triarch, is  not  the  very  tenderest  Mother.  But  if 
not  these,  it  is  because  our  best  name  cometh  short. 
Those  names  are  only  poems,  emblems,  symbols, — 
"idols"  to  help  the  mind:  even  as  the  Incarnation 
doctrine  and  Madonna  Mary  are  idols  still  more 
definite  in  outline,  and  by  that  sharper  definition 
more  helpful  still  to  myriads  of  minds  trying  to 
realize  Eternal  Goodness.  "Idol" — let  the  word 
be  spoken  fearlessly;  these  names  are  all  but 
"idols"  of  the  mind  But  know  what  "idol" 
means, — an  image  making  thought  more  visible  to 
consciousness.  Man  scarcely  thinks  except  in  images, 
in  idols:  at  every  word  we  speak  an  image  drops. 

Be  braver,  all!  Be  fairer,  too!  Say  "Father," 
"Christ,"  "Madonna;  "  yet,  saying  these,  beware! 
We  easily  may  make  them  idols  in  the  hurtful 
sense,  mistaking  form  for  substance.  Or  refuse  to 
say  "  Our  Father,"  if  truth  to  you  forbid  it;  but  be- 
ware as  much  in  that  refusal !  For  to  fear  idols  for 
oneself,  or  to  rave  at  them  in  others,  is  still  to  fear  and 
rave  at — idols.  Mistake  not  thou  the  form  for 
substance.  To  put  both  warnings  into  one;  beware 
of  thinking  it  eitherthe  essence  of  religion,  or  the 
essence  of  superstition,  to  say  "  God  "  and  "Father." 
To  suppose  it  either  is  to  judge  by  names,  and  that 
is  the  superstition,  that  the  sacrilege. 

But  since  it  is  nothing  but  morality  in  us  that 
makes  the  God  so  real,  so  live,  so  near  to  us,  we 
ought  to  deeply  thank  these  "Ethical  Culture  So- 


The  Faith  of  Ethics.  125 

cieties,"  now  fepringiug  up  among  us,  for  their  sin- 
gle emphasis.  They  seem  sect-like  in  their  insisted- 
on  use  and  disuse  of  certain  names;  they  seem 
dogmatic, — like  many  of  ourselves.  They  are 
Puritans  whitewashing  the  cathedrals  in  the  inter- 
est of  truth ;  Pimtans  denying  poetry,  because  poe- 
try is  imagery  and  imagery  so  often  means  idola- 
try. We  need  not  follow  them  into  any  narrowness, 
from  which  they  may  themselves  escape  in  time. 
Man  has  a  birthright  to  poetry  and  symbolism,  and 
they  will  not  be  denied  out  of  him.  They  are  his  chief 
access  to  the  higher  realities,  almost  his  only  access 
to  the  highest,  and  are  the  natural  expression  of  his 
thought  concerning  these  realities.  But  our  "Ethical 
Culture"  men  have  the  very  heart  of  "religion" 
in  them,  names  or  no  names :  and  what  cares  that 
Real  Presence  which  it  be, — with  name  or  without  ? 
They  will  deepen  spiritual  perception  in  us,  who 

reatly  need  to  have  it  deepened.  They  are  proph- 
ets of  the  true  God, — the  God  whose  name  they 
are  forbidding  men. 

Named  or  unnamed,  to  recognize  and  realize  that 
One,  to  he  that  One  within  our  atom-range,  is  life, 
— life  kin  to  its  own  Eternal  Life.  To  be  simple 
before  the  thought  of  it ;  to  be  silent,  if  silence  be 
the  true  simplicity  for  us ;  but  if  our  feeling  move 
us  so,  to  utter  praise  and  thanksgiving  and  trust 
in  awed  and  childlike  words;  to  take  joy  with  a 
thrill  of  gratitude  to  it;  to  do  our  work  and  spend 
ourselves  for  men  with  an  unfaltering  sense  that,  in 
the  service  of  the  right,   the  atoms  and  the  great 


126  The  Faith  of   Ethics. 

Whole  blend  strength;  in  tragedies,  to  wrap  our- 
selves about  with  trust  in  goodness  at  the  heart  of 
all  that  hurts;  in  soitow,  to  be  quiet  from  convic- 
tion that  "  no  good  thing  is  failure  and  no  evil 
thing  success,"  and  that  "  no  evil  can  befall  a  good 
man,  whether  he  be  alive  or  dead," — this  is  to  "  live 
in  God." 

We  all  shall  see  it  yet!  Men  will  see  it  and  re- 
joice in  it, — this  larger,  nearer  thought  of  God! 
Something  akin  to  what  has  happened  to  that 
thought  as  relative  to  "  jVIiracles "  and  to  "Crea- 
tion "  will  result  again.  Now,  we  say,  not  miracle 
but  law ;  not  creation,  but  evolution.  And  God  at 
first  seemed  distanced,  de-personalizedj  and  lost 
thereby:  "  They  have  taken  away  my  Lord,  and  I 
know  not  where  they  have  laid  him."  Then,  as 
our  eyes  got  new  focus  for  the  thought,  we  began 
to  see  the  Presence  nearer,  greater  than  we  ever 
saw  before,  its  Face  closer  to  our  face  and  more 
awful  in  beneficence,  its  Hands  more  tremendous 
in  their  hold!  Far  larger  has  the  thought  of  God 
become,  far  deeper  is  the  faith  in  him  becoming,  by 
the  new  conceptions  of  physical  law  that  v\"e  owe  to 
science.  Even  so,  and  more  than  so,  will  it  be  with 
that  thought,  and  faith,  as  we  grow  to  see  him  in 
the  eihical  law  and  to  identify  morals  with  religion: 
He  will  become  the  Living  God  to  us  as  never  yet. 

No  God  except  the  perfect  of  morality  is  worth 
the  worship.  Drain  off  from  infinite  Power  infinite 
Right,  and  you  have  left  a  dummy  God,  and  none 


The  Faith  of  Ethics.  127 

so  poor  to  do  him  reverence:  no  vian^  at  least,  be- 
cause man  has  in  himself  the  moral  element  which 
then  that  God  would  lack.  Alas  for  the  idea  of 
God,  then,  that  is  in  any  peril  through  extension  of 
the  Faith  of  Ethics!  That  God  is  a  dying  God, — 
Saturn  ebbing  before  the  new  Jupiter,  Jupiter  ebb- 
ing before  the  new  Christ.  In  truth,  all  nick- 
named gods — all  gods  to  whom  men  deem  their 
name  essential — have  funerals  as  time  runs  on. 
But  never  "  alas! "  for  the  God  of  whom  I  speak. 
Of  him,  ''The  Lord  God  Omnipotent  Reigneth!" 
and  "  Thine  is  the  Kingdom  and  the  Power  and  the 
Glory  for  Ever  and  Ever!"  By  extensions,  by  all 
possible  extensions  of  the  Faith  of  Ethics,  the  God 
whom  all  names  mean  and  no  names  utter  shall 
grow  and  greaten  on  man's  vision.  And  as  with 
all  the  other  greatened  meanings  in  religion,  the 
world  will  by  and  by  be  very  glad. 

So  let  me  end  with  my  refrain,  worth  chanting 
in  the  memory'  until,  like  great  music,  its  meanijig 
dawnsupon  us:  "Ethics,"  thought  out,  is  "relig- 
ious" thought;  Ethics,  feltott/,  is  religious  feeling; 
Ethics,  lived  out,  is  the  religious  life.  Let  the  hor- 
izons open! 


RELIGION  FROM  THE  NEAR  END. 

JENKIN  LLOYD  JONES. 

"  Lord,  it  is  good  for  us  to  be  here." 
Matthew  xvii.,  4. 

I. 

Take  any  definition  of  religion  you  please,  only 
so  it  be  large  enough.  Be  sure  you  put  into  it  the 
divinest  fullness  possible  to  the  experience  of  man, 
I  prefer  to  interpret  religion  at  its  maximum  rather 
than  its  minimum,.  Let  it  mean  the  greatest  thought 
of  God,  the  tenderest  trust  in  Providence,  the  clos- 
est communion  with  Jesus,  the  most  loving  appre- 
ciation of  the  Bible,  an  assuring  hope  of  the  eternal 
life,  and  the  loftiest  habit  of  worship  that  the  human 
soul  can  know.  No  other  definition  answers  my 
purpose. 

Then,  I  say  religion  thus  defined  is  best  realized 
from  the  near  end.  Indeed,  it  can  be  realized  in 
its  fullness  only  by  him  who  seeks  it  fi'om  this  end 
of  the  line;  who  discovers  sanctities  in  near  things. 
Right  here  or  nowhere  is  the  gate  of  heaven  for  us 
to-day.  The  best  of  mediatorial  religion  is  a  sec- 
ond hand  affair.  It  is  a  hearsay,  a  reminiscence. 
He  who  finds  more  sacredness  in  distant  than  in  near 
things;  for  whom  glory  settles  chiefly  on  remote 
shores ;  for  whom  morality  is  best  enforced  by  texts 
and  events  springing  out  of  the  experiences  of  others, 
may  in  some  sense  be  said  to  have  "got  religio-n," 

129 


130  Eeligion  from  the  Near  End. 

but  religion  has  not  got  him.  Religion  is  still  to 
him  a  possession,  and  not  being.  He  may  have 
studied  a  paper  diagram  of  the  New  Jerusalem,  but 
he  has  not  yet  entered  within  its  gates.  He  may 
profess  the  "  Christian"  name,  but  he  has  not  yet 
known  the  religion  of  Jesus.  Jesus'  religion,  if  it 
was  anything,  was  tj/imediatorial.  His  gospel  was 
rooted  in  common  things.  His  Bible  was  the  pages 
of  nature  and  the  experience  of  peasant  hearts. 
His  speech  was  redolent  with  the  fragrance  of  the 
roadside,  and  his  principles  were  enforced  by  the 
experiences  of  the  fishing  boat  and  the  seashore. 
Sparrows,  lilies,  weeds,  a  mustard  plant  and  a 
woman's  dough-bowl  disclosed  to  him  the  secrets  of 
the  divine  life.  It  was  with  such  alphabet  of  earth 
that  he  spelled  out  the  lessons  of  heaven. 

Let  us  see  what  can  be  done  by  beginning  at 
this  end  of  the  line.  You  may,  if  you  like,  drop  all 
disputed  words,  confess  your  doubts  and  plead 
your  ignorance  ;  omit  the  pretentious  phrases,  throw 
away  youi*  sham  beliefs,  and  even  your  "would- 
believes."  Stop  aping  the  piety  you  do  not  feel, 
and  invoice  among  your  spiritual  possessions  only 
those  things  that  are  really  yours  as  commodities 
of  soul.  When  your  vocabulary  is  reduced  to  the 
limits  of  your  present  possessions  and  the  sincere 
experiences  of  to-day,  what  have  you  out  of  which 
to  frame  both  religious  thought  and  feeling  ?  Pres- 
ent experience,  its  joy  and  beauty,  the  nearest  and 
humblest  duty,  the  simplest  act  of  devotion  that 
finds  expression  in  the  kiss  you  give  to  a  babe,  or  in 


Religion  from  the  Near  End.  131 

the  delicate  awe  you  feel  in  the  presence  of  the 
first  flowers  of  spring.  Just  these  and  nothing 
more.  Count  them,  if  you  must,  upon  the  fingers 
of  one  hand,  but  make  the  most  of  them.  Follow 
any  one  of  them  out  in  thought,  in  feeling  and  in 
life,  and  the  essentials  of  religion  are  yours.  Any 
one  of  them  will  lead  to  the  Mount  of  Transfigura- 
tion, where,  with  Peter,  you  exclaim,  "Lord,  it  is 
good  to  be  here!  " 

Take  the  simplest,  coldest  bit  of  science,  work 
it  out  from  the  near  end,  and  you  cannot  leave  it 
without  feeling  that  you  are  in  league  with 
Eternity  and  that  you  are  touching  directly  the 
Infinite  God.  Sometimes  your  human  certainties 
are  reduced  veiy  low,  and  you  say,  "  I  only  know 
that  two  and  two  make  four."  Very  well,  if  you 
are  sure  of  that,  let  that  be  for  the  time  your  only 
confession  of  faith.  Not  much  of  a  creed,  is  it  ? 
Still,  if  you  hold  to  it  and  live  up  to  it,  it  is  creed 
enough  to  make  a  saint  of  you.  "Two  and 
two  make  four,"  always,  everywhere.  They  made 
four  when  Zoroaster  taught  the  law  of  right  a 
thousand  years  before  Jesus,  They  made  four 
when  the  earliest  shepherds  began  to  count  the 
stars.  They  make  four  to  the  Esquimau  in  his 
snow  hut,  to  the  Australian  as  he  basks  in  his 
nakedness  under  tropic  palms.  "  Two  and  two 
make  four."  This  is  the  beginning  of  that  arith- 
metic that  eventually  foretells  the  eclipse,  antici- 
pates the  movements  of  planets  and  weighs  the 
earth  in  its  balances.    Start  from  this  end,  and   go 


182  Religion  from  the  Near  End. 

only  as  far  hb  your  science  and  your  logic  allow,  and 
your  "two  and  two  make  four"  will  roll  up  into 
the  millions  of  measured  miles,  through  the  thou- 
sands of  counted  worlds  that  form  the  vestibule  to 
the  unmeasured  star-studded  depths  of  immensity. 
It  is  indeed  the  near  end  of  infinitude.  "  Two  and 
two  make  four  "  is  a  truth  that  touches  that  mystic 
law  that  star-rays  the  snow-flake ;  that  polishes  to 
exactitude  the  facets  of  the  angled  spar;  that 
moves  the  procession  of  life  in  pairs;  that  ar- 
ranges in  perfect  symmetry  the  petals  of  the 
prairie  flowers,  places  the  million  needles  of  the 
pine  tree  according  to  the  law  of  the  spiral,  and 
shows  us,  as  Emerson  says,  that  "  Nature  loves  the 
number  five."  This  fragment  of  the  multiplica- 
tion table  is  the  beginning  of  that  integrity  that 
makes  commerce  possible,  trade  legitimate  and 
thrift  commendable.  To  believe  it  is  to  believe 
that  some  things  are  settled  in  this  world,  and 
that,  too,  by  a  power  other  than  man's.  It  is  to  be- 
lieve that  we  are  law-engirdled;  that  we  live  in  an 
ordered  universe;  that  purpose  and  method  lie  at 
the  root  of  things  and  spring  out  of  the  heart  of 
being.  This  is  to  believe  in  God,  whose  funda- 
mental attributes  are  integrity,  inflexibility,  uni- 
versality. If  we  do  not  prove  infidel  to  this 
inspiration,  we  shall  find  ourselves  eventually 
on  our  knees  before  the  altar  it  rears.  It  is  the 
altar  Beautiful  as  well  as  the  altar  Useful. 

Take  another  fragment  of  science.     Turn  away, 
if  you  must,  from  religion  and  its  associate  words, 


Religion  from  the  Near  End.  133 

but  make  the  most  of  a  di'op  of  water.  Note  the 
mystic  wedlock  of  the  paiticles  of  oxygen  and 
hydrogen.  Trace  the  journey  of  that  drop  of 
water  from  the  unseen  gases  through  lake,  vapor, 
cloud,  rain,  up  again  in  the  green  leaf,  pushing 
into  the  bud  of  spring,  bursting  somehow  into  the 
imponderable  and  once  more  unseen  fragrance  of 
the  arbutus,  and  you  have  once  more  climbed  the 
Mount  of  Transfiguration.  Follow  the  drop  of 
water  this  way  and  it  climbs  to  the  star,  that  way 
and  it  touches  the  nebulous  fire-mists  out  of 
which  worlds  were  rolled;  follow  its  backward 
track  and  it  will  lead  you  to  a  Genesis  millions  of 
years  earlier  than  the  earliest  Adam;  follow  the 
track  forward  and  it  conducts  you  to  a  wild  world 
tamed  into  a  garden,  to  a  wilderness  transformed 
into  a  harvest  field.  It  gives  rose  gardens  where 
briers  once  grew,  and  makes  the  desert  bloom  with 
lilies.  Inevitably  religion  is  the  outcome  of  science, 
if  it  is  sought  thus  fx'om  the  near  end  of  our  lives. 
But  there  are  those  who  will  say,  "  I've  no  head 
and  still  less  heart  for  science;  '  two  and  two  make 
four '  and  nothing  more.  To  me  nature  is  cold 
and  dead.  I  find  no  Infinite  Spirit  in  your  pro- 
toplasm, no  shaping  Providence  in  your  chaos  of 
atoms.  The  thought  of  evolving  worlds,  developing 
planets,  and  aspiring  organisms  do  not  feed  my 
heart.  Evolution  to  me  is  soulless  and  Godless." 
Do  not  be  discouraged.  All  roads  lead  to  Thee, 
thou  Infinite  and  All  Sufficient!     Try  beauty. 


134  Religion  from  the  Near  End. 

"  If  you  get  simple  beauty  and  naught  else 
You  get  about  the  best  thing  God  invents," 

says  the  old  monk  in  the  poem.  In  getting  this 
beauty  what  do  you  get  ?  Whence  came  the  deli- 
cate tint  of  the  flower  ?  Who  moulded  its  graceful 
cup  and  fringed  its  golden  lips?  Compound 
who  can  its  yellow  and  green  ;  put  all  this  on 
the  most  Godless  basis  you  can,  try  and  blur 
the  marvel  by  the  words  "matter,"  "materialism," 
"law,"  " evolution,"  anything  but  chance.  These 
words  do  not  lessen  one  whit  the  loveliness 
nor  reduce  the  marvel.  All  the  same  have  the  teem- 
ing ages  groaned  in  the  production  of  this  beauty. 
Nature  and  human  nature  are  compounded  in  your 
lily.  In  it  are  found  the  gardener's  patience,  wo- 
man's devotion,  the  child's  appreciation.  Sever 
who  can  this  tendency  of  nature  to  ornamentation 
from  the  thirst  of  the  human  soul  for  perfection. 
Will  you  see  beauty  here  and  none  in  the  pursing 
lips  of  babyhood  ?  Grace  in  the  flower,  and  none 
in  the  hand  that  trained  it?  Fragrance  in  the 
blossom  that  sets  us  at  peace  with  nature,  and  no 
helpfulness  in  the  hand  that  gathered  it  for  us, 
setting  us  at  peace  with  human  nature  ? 

If  in  the  flowers  we  discover  a  subtle  power, 
which  in  our  timidity  we  may  hesitate  to  name,  shall 
we  not  be  impelled  to  strive  to  create  a  bit  of  beauty 
somewhere  on  our  own  account,  moved  either  to 
copy  or  excel  it?  If  you  are  so  made  that  you 
"love  things  first  when  you  see  them  painted," 
and  are  thus  led  by  the  Art  road  to  a  passion  for 


Religion  front,  the  Near  End.  135 

the  beautiful;  does  not  that  road  lead  to  piety? 
Take  the  familiar  story  of  Palissy's  passion  for  the 
enamel  to  beautify  a  coffee  cup;  that  insatiable 
hunger  for  the  compound  that  in  fervid  heat  would 
yield  the  polish;  that  wild  intoxication  that  tore 
down  the  rafters  of  his  house  that  the  fire  in  the 
kilns  might  not  go  out.  Looking  back  of  that 
frenzy  we  find  concentrated  what  stragglings  of 
human  life  that  have  gone  before !  The  power  that 
refined  the  barbarities  of  war,  the  navigator's  cour- 
age, the  conqueror's  triumph,  the  temple  at  Jeru- 
salem, the  Parthenon  at  Athens,  the  Forum  at 
Rome,  psalm,  prophet's  word,  poet's  song,  all  were 
related  to  that  fiery  soid  that  was  mad  for  beauty. 
Looking  forward,  the  passion  that  burned  in  the 
heart  of  the  Huguenot  potter  was  one  of  the  many 
seeds  that  ripened  into  the  art,  the  refinement,  and 
culture  of  to-day.  Palissy  did  not  originate  him- 
self. No  beauty  began  with  him,  none  ended  in 
him.  Each  is  related  to  all.  The  centuries  gone 
move  in  every  human  feeling.  The  generations 
past  have  contributed  to  every  thought.  Yes,  the 
unity  of  history,  the  solidarity  of  the  race,  the  kin- 
ship of  religions  and  the  chorus  of  the  prophet 
souls  of  earth,  are  found  in  any  human  heart  that 
is  fired  with  any  love  for  the  beautiful.  Not  sym- 
bolized there,  but  there  in  fact.  Given  a  soul  sen- 
sitive to  color  and  form,  susceptible  to  harmony  and 
symmetry,  and  there  is  that  in  a  noble  build- 
ing, a  pine  tree,  or  m  the  melody  of  a  chorus,  that 
will  bring  to  him  religious  refinement,  strength,  and 


136  Religion  frotn  the  Near  End. 

sanctity.     We  remember   the    story  of  the    atheist 

artist  who,  as  he  looked  up  into  the  waving  branches 

of  a  magnificent  tree,    found  himself  whispering 

reverently  for  the  first  time  "  God."     "When 

"  Beauty  through  my  senses  stole, 
I  yielded  myself  to  the  perfect  whole." 

But  the  gates  of  Beauty  as  well  as  the  gates 
previously  mentioned  may  be  closed  to  some.  Not 
finding  religion  on  these  lines,  such  would  be  in- 
structed of  Reason.  They  ask  of  Philosophy, 
"  Where  is  God?"  On  this  road  certainly  religion 
is  found  in  fullest  measure  by  those  who  seek  it 
from  the  near  end.  The  older  philosophies  tried 
to  formulate  the  universe,  to  catalogue  the  attrib- 
utes of  God.  The  result  has  always  been  confu- 
sion, distrust,  dogmatism,  and  defeat,  because  the 
universe  is  too  big  for  the  mind  of  man.  "Canst 
thou  by  searching  find  out  God?"  The  fallible 
mind  cannot  compass  the  boundless.  The  immor- 
tality men  can  prove  is  not  the  eternal  life,  because 
man's  finiteness  cannot  hold  the  Infinite.  The  lesser 
cannot  contain  the  greater.  After  the  long  and 
painful  quest  there  is  coming  a  philosophy  that 
recognizes  the  limitations  of  the  mind;  that  ceases 
from  the  attempt  to  solve  the  Infinite  or  to 
compass  the  Almighty,  and,  instead  is  trying 
to  classify  the  few  experiences  of  the  finite,  to 
study  God  from  the  man-ward  side.  From  the 
known  it  travels  toward  the  unknown.  Beginning 
at  this  end  of  the  line,  lo,  every  thought  taps 
at    a    temple    door,    every    emotion     lands     the 


Religion  from  the  Near  End.  137 

thinking  maa  on  his  knees,  every  sensation  places 
his  hands  upon  altar  rails.  When  man  is  perfectly 
willing  to  confess  his  ignorance,  then  knowledge 
illuminates  his  life  with  a  sense  that  the  unknown 
is  more  real  than  the  known,  that  every  known  fact 
impinges  upon  our  senses  because  there  is  behind 
it  a  greater  unknown  verity.  Thus  it  is  that  every 
idea  that  passes  through  the  brain,  like  every  pulse 
of  beauty,  compels  us  to  bow  before  the  invisible 
but  real  God.  Thought,  pursued  in  this  way  from 
the  near  end,  brings  the  courage  to  many,  aye,  to 
most,  to  use  the  words  of  religion  which,  under 
the  method  that  began  at  the  farther  end,  they 
were  compelled  to  relinquish.  Even  though  they 
miss  the  words,  they  find  the  thing. 

But  should  the  lines  of  Reason  blur  before  they 
reach  the  Transfiguration  Mount,  there  are  yet 
other  roads  that  lead  that  way.  Such  a  road  is 
Love.  I  do  not  mean  at  the  outset  what  is  com- 
monly called  the  "love  of  God."  If  you  must 
frankly  confess  that  you  know  not  where  or  who 
God  is,  it  is  still  well  if  you  love  anything, — your 
wife,  child,  pet  dog  or  favorite  flower.  Be  true  to 
the  leadings  of  this  love,  however  simple,  and  it 
will  mellow  your  life,  interpret  for  you  your  neigh- 
bor's better  nature,  reconcile  you  to  your  enemies, 
put  new  beauty  into  the  stars,  re- animate  the 
world  of  pi'ophecy,  and  wreathe  with  hope  and 
resignation  your  graves. 

"Tell  the  boys  I've  got  Luck  with  me  now,"  said 
the  rough  miner  in  Bret  Harte's  story,  as  he  drifted 


138  Religion  from  the  Near  End. 

away  on  the  shadowy  river  that  flows  forever  into 
the  unknown  sea,  clinging  to  the  body  of  the  frail 
babe  whose  advent  had  caused  vines  and  flowers  to 
grow  around  the  cabin  doors  and  taught  the  miners 
to  wash  themselves  twice  a  day. 

"  Tennessee  ain't  pretty,  I  know,  but  she  air 
powerful  peart,"  said  Birt  Dicey  in  Craddock's 
story.  The  presence  of  the  unkempt  little  sister 
persuaded  him  that  he  "'couldn't  afford  to  be  a 
scoundrel  and  sich."  She  followed  him,  blessing, 
mellowing,  ennobling  his  hard  life  all  through  the 
story,  lifting  his  awful  drudgery  into  the  sanctities 
of  worship.  "  One  way  of  adoring  God  is  to  love 
one's  wife,"  says  Victor  Hugo.  "In  thy  face  have 
I  seen  the  Eternal,"  said  the  dying  Baron  Bunsen 
to  his  wife. 

Mr.  Calthrop  in  the  paper  published  elsewhere 
in  this  volume  describes  the  contents  of  one  cubic 
inch  of  space,  midway  between  the  Sun  and  Sirius. 
In  this  inch  he  finds  "  the  exactness  of  God,  the 
economy  of  God,  and  the  love  of  God."  If  all 
these  are  found  in  so  material  and  external  a  unit, 
how  much  more  are  they  to  be  found  in  a  unit  of 
heart  life.  Study,  as  this  cubic  inch  of  space  is 
studied,  the  confident  kiss  which  a  strange  babe 
gave  me  one  day.  Think  of  the  ages  of  barbaric 
struggle,  the  millions  of  crushed  aspirations,  the 
unnumbered  longings,  the  search  of  the  savage 
for  safety,  of  the  barbarian  for  shelter,  of  the  pio- 
neer for  a  lodgment  in  the  inhospitable  wilds,  of 
the  statesman  for  an  ordered  commonwealth,  the 


Religion  from  the  Near  End.  139 

inventor  for  the  amenities  and  refinements  of  home, 
the  physician  for  the  condition  of  health,  the  edu- 
cator for  the  expansion  of  mind,  the  moralist  for 
the  purity  of  the  soul,  the  religionist  for  the  ten- 
derness of  the  spirit,  that  have  preceded  the  confid- 
ing kiss  of  a  child  of  civilized  man.  Heart-sick 
women  and  passion- disciplined  men  march  in  files 
ages  long  behind  the  kiss  of  a  modern  babe.  In 
receiving  that  kiss  I  was  made  heir  of  all  the  ages. 
Not  so  complicated  are  the  material  activities  in 
an  inch  of  space,  as  the  spiritual  complexity  in 
that  baby's  kiss.  Looking  back,  it  opens  up  such 
a  history  of  the  human  race  as  no  infidel  or  atheist 
can  contemplate  without  religious  awe  and  thanks- 
giving,— except  such  infidels  and  atheists  as  are 
made  in  the  would-be  homes  of  religion  itself,  by 
the  preachers  who,  beginning  at  the  further  end, 
teach  of  an  accursed  world,  of  a  child  that  is  a 
doomed  fi-agment  of  a  depraved  humanity.  From 
that  kiss  we  may  look  forward  as  well  as  backward. 
How  it  reaches  into  lives  that  are  to  be!  In  it  is 
the  beginning  of  home  loves,  generations  of  think- 
ing, loving  men  and  women.  It  is  a  deposit  of 
the  human  heart  in  the  love  store  of  humanity. 
Forevermore  will  man  be  somewhat  the  richer  for 
that  impulse  toward  kindness.  God's  kingdom  is 
more  on  the  earth  for  it !  How  religious  are  the 
contents  of  that  kiss  ? 

But  should  even  this  road  fail;  if  love,  simple 
human  love,  like  science,  philosophy  and  art,  should 
prove  a  closed  door,  there  still  remains  the  East 


140  Religion  from  the  Near  End. 

Gate  of  the  Temple,  that  through  which  Jehovah 
himself  passed  in  the  vision  of  Ezekiel,  the  gate  of 
Duty,  the  high  portal  of  the  sublime  "I  ought." 
Do  your  simplest  duty  towards  yoiu"  nearest  neigh- 
bor, if  it  be  the  humblest  of  your  dumb  relations, 
and  somehow  the  bells  of  heaven  will  begin  to  ring 
in  your  soul.  When  the  boy  withheld  the  stone 
that  he  had  raised  against  the  turtle,  sunning  in 
the  pasture  pond-hole,  evermore  did  the  voice  of 
God  abide  with  him,  making  him  indeed  a  "  Theo- 
dore," a  "gift  of  God"  to  the  world.  "I  don't 
know  how  to  teach  my  boy  his  duty  towards  God," 
said  a  mother  to  me  one  day.  "Very  well.  Teach 
him  his  duty  to  the  little  bird  in  nesting  time 
and  you  have  taught  him  to  begin  to  adjust  his 
relation  to  the  Infinite  Father  of  all."  Make  a  wo- 
man ashamed  of  being  a  partner  in  the  cruelty  and 
sacrilege  that,  in  the  name  of  beauty,  deprives  a 
meadow-lark  of  its  life  that  its  dead  wings  may  de- 
file the  grace  of  a  woman's  brow,  and  you  have  done 
more  towards  giving  that  woman  a  religious  love,  a 
soul  sensitive  to  the  sanctities  of  being,  a  heart 
beset  with  a  sense  of  divine  nearness,  than  if 
you  had  secured  her  signature  to  a  creed  in  which 
all  the  holy  words  are  written,  if  they  are  written 
there  from  the  further  end.  For  such  a  one  would 
be  but  a  believer  in  a  God  that  somebody  else  dis- 
covered, one  who  relies  upon  an  historical  mediator, 
and  trusts  in  a  traditional  revelation.  The  times 
are  growing  more  religious  because  men  are  be- 
ginning to  find  out  that  the  clearest  revelations  of 


Religion  from  the  Near  End.  141 

the  Infinite  come  through  the  loyalty  of  the  finite, 
and  that  all  the  sanctuaries  are  shut  save  to  those 
who  tread  the  ways  of  righteousness,  yes  and  all  of 
them  are  ultimately  opened  to  those  who  do  walk 
the  highways  of  rectitude.  All  the  shining  ones  of 
history  have  found  that  the  road  of  morality  leads 
to  the  mount  of  spirituality. 

There  was  a  time  when  right  was  synonymous 
with  might,  and  when  religion  was  full  of  selfish 
anxieties  and  the  most  tangible  element  in  it  was 
fear.     But  under  the  law  of  evolution  the  growth 
in  morals  brings  ethics  to  religious  altitudes,    and 
religion  at  last  blooms  into  the  decencies,  ripens 
into  the    moralities  and  yields    the   golden   fruit 
of   character.       I   accept    without    argument    the 
formula, — 
"  Ethics  thought  out  is  religious  thought." 
"  Ethics  felt  out  is  religious  feeling." 
"Ethics  lived  out  is  religious  life." 

To  this  I  would  add,— 

Science  thought  out  is  religious  thought. 

Science  felt  out  is  religious  feeling. 

Science  lived  out  is  religious  life. 

And  so  again, — 

Beauty  thought  out  is  religious  thought. 

Beauty  felt  out  is  religious  feeling. 

Beauty  lived  out  is  religious  life. 

In  the  same  way  Reason  followed  from  the 
nearer  end  lands  us  in  religious  thought,  feeling, 
and  life.  And  is  not  the  same  true  of  Love,  duty 
and  all  of  the  great  verities  of  the  life  that  now  is  ? 


142  Religion  from  the  Near  End. 

So  difficult  it  is  to  follow  love  and  righteousness 
into  that  Divinity  of  love  and  righteousness  that 
pervades  everything,  to  climb  out  of  human  loves 
and  human  duties  into  a  consciousness  of  that  Infi- 
nite love  and  power  that  is  paternal,  aye,  more,  ma- 
ternal also  ;  that  at  the  risk  of  marring  the  propor- 
tions of  this  discourse  and  at  the  danger  of  repeti- 
tion I  venture  to  dwell  longer  upon  these  points. 
The  burden  of  Israel's  prophets  was  that  there  was 
a  power  at  work  that  would  ultimately  heal  the  na- 
tion of  its  disease  and  redeem  it  from  its  iniquities. 
In  their  clearest  moments  they  saw  this  power 
working  with  no  intermittent  methods  "  Behold 
I  have  loved  thee  with  an  everlasting  love,"  said 
the  grim  Jeremiah.  The  prophet's  word  has  now 
become  Science.  The  accumulated  experience  of 
mankind  shows  that  there  is  a  power  working  in 
and  through  nature  for  the  elevation  and  sanctifi.- 
cation  of  souls;  a  power  that  is  eliminating  the  bad, 
conserving  the  good,  weeding  out  the  tares,  gar- 
nering the  wheat,  suppressing  hatred,  conserving 
kindness,  confounding  and  burydng  wrong,  re-en- 
forcing and  vitalizing  good.  I  see  the  long  centu- 
ries filled  with  discord,  contention,  lust  and  ambi- 
tion, and  yet  the  ultimate  generalization  puts  a  race 
accent  upon  the  doctrine  to  which  the  Hebrew 
prophet  dared  only  place  a  national  accent.  That 
"everlasting  love"  that  brooded  over  Judea  is 
now  found  to  be  brooding  over  the  world.  The 
accumulated  testimony  of  the  statistician  goes  to 
show  that  the  law  which  in  the  lower  realms  of  nature 


Religion  from  the  Near  End.  143 

grants  Hurvival  to  the  strongest,  in  the  higher 
realms  of  life  secures  the  survival  of  the  noblest. 
The  forces  that  in  nature  struggled  for  the  upright 
form  of  the  human  body  are  now  transmuted  into 
a  strain  for  the  integrity  of  the  human  soul.  Claws 
give  way  to  fingers  spiritually  as  well  as  physically; 
horns  are  supplanted  by  the  temple  domes  of 
thought,  and  smiles  now  defend  where  once  the 
clenched  fist  was  needed.  Herbert  Spencer,  guided 
by  the  facts  of  history  alone,  shows  how  man  has 
slowly  been  led  upward  out  of  egoism  into  altru- 
ism, that  is,  out  of  the  narrow  concern  for  self  into 
a  broad  concern  for  others. 

Do  you  point  despairingly  at  the  great  growths 
of  monopolies,  the  anaconda  coils  of  corporations 
that  threaten  to  strangle  entire  communities  ?  I 
over-match  these  with  a  like  growth  in  the  corpo- 
rate interests  of  morality  and  religion.  There  is  a 
co-operation  for  the  eternal  things  of  love  to-day 
that  is  more  than  a  match  for  the  co-operation  for 
the  infernal  things  of  greed  and  hate.  The  com- 
binations of  disinterestedness  are  stronger  than 
are  those  of  selfishness. 

The  monopolies  of  the  Western  Union  Telegraph 
Company,  of  the  Erie  or  Pacific  Railroads  present 
no  such  powers  as  do  the  school  systems  of  Amer- 
ica, the  far-reaching  helpfrJness  of  the  Catholic 
church,  or  the  splendid  aggressive  power  of  Meth- 
odism. Clara  Barton,  the  founder  of  the  Interna- 
tional Order  of  the  Red  Cross,  whose  banners  cross 
with  impunity  the  red  line  of  battle  in  the  name 


144  Religion  from  the  Near  End. 

of  love,  has  sent  an  influence  farther  than  that  of 
Gould  or  Vanderbilt  has  ever  gone.  Her  name  will 
be  remembered  when  theirs  have  gone  down  into 
everlasting  oblivion. 

But  there  are  those  who  share  this  enthusiasm 
for  the  good,  who  believe  in  the  final  triumph  of 
love,  who  will  yet  insist  that  this  is  but  the  progress 
ihoihuman  nature  makes.  They  would  say,  "This 
is  the  growth  that  the  atheist  gladly  recognizes. 
We  see  here  no  Divine  love  working  for  the  redemp- 
tion of  mankind."  I  cannot  so  sever  man  from 
the  universe  to  which  he  belongs.  The  heart  of  that 
Eternal  out  of  which  humanity  has  been  projected 
has  given  of  its  own  life  to  man  and  put  this 
thirst  for  perfection  into  his  heart. 

He  has  written  in  the  brain  of  the  savage  some 
mystic  lines  that  contain  the  secret  of  the  beatific 
life.  The  power  that  paints  the  plumage  of  the 
bird  of  Paradise  in  Central  Africa,  that  woos  the 
eidelweiss  into  being  among  Alpine  glaciers  and 
causes  the  ungainly  cacti  to  bloom  on  our  western 
deserts,  caused  David  and  Jeremiah  to  sing  the 
songs  of  trust  in  Judea,  lifted  the  protecting  aim 
of  Marcus  Aurelius  over  the  trembling  captives  of 
the  Roman  legions,  and  opens  the  maternal  instincts 
of  woman.  There  are  in  the  human  soul  forces 
that  make  for  love  and  duty,  which  the  soul's  self 
did  not  create,  and  these  forces  are  akin  to  that 
august  power  to  which  I  give  the  highest  word  hu- 
man lips  have  learned  to  lisp,  and  call  this 
power  "  God " — the  Father   of  my  Soul.     I  only 


Religion  from  the  Near  End.  145 

regret  the  inevitable  inadequacy  of  all  words.  Of 
course  my  finiteness  cannot  comprehend  or  ex- 
press the  Infinite  Being,  and  if  there  be  any  scru- 
ples about  personalizing  this  Being,  it  is  be- 
cause he  is  more  and  not  less  than  personality. 
This  Being  so  real,  omniscient,  and  omnipresent, 
dwarfs  all  other  being  into  fi'agments  of  the  infinite 
whole.  Great  as  humanity  is,  high  as  are  the 
powers  of  the  human  soul,  sacred  as  are  the  affec- 
tions of  the  human  heart,  still  that  is  gross  idola- 
try which  teaches  that  there  is  nothing  in  the  uni- 
verse to  challenge  oiu-  reverence  but  man,  no  sanc- 
tities before  which  we  are  to  bend  the  knee  save 
those  of  human  thought  and  feeling.  There  is  a 
unity  which  covers  the  sun  and  the  sun -worshiper. 
The  power  that  shines  in  the  Pleiades  is  akin  to 
that  which  shines  in  the  thinker's  mind  and  glows 
in  the  mother's  heart.  The  power  that  "  hides 
within  the  lily  "  has  put  his  "  touch  in  the  man." 

"  No  leaf  that  dawns  to  petal 
But  hints  the  angel  plan." 

The  poet  is  right  when  he  teaches  us  that  he  who 
weaves  the  shining  garments  of  nature  is  a  power 
that  has  brightened  the  ages  of  humanity  and 
caused  the  race  to  cluster  in  blossoms  of  beauty  in 
what  would  otherwise  remain  the  chaotic  fields  of 
time. 

But  if  we  miss  the  Father's  face  and  the  pater- 
nal arm  in  all  the  fields  of  nature  we  may  still  find 
him  within.     If  we  only  confess  that  we  are  a  part 


146  Religion  from  the  Near  End. 

of  the  great  whole,  we  cannot  deny  that  there  is 
that,  not  ourselves,  that  invests  every  righteous 
endeavor  with  its  becoming  joy  and  strength, 
every  sinful  deed  with  its  warning  pain.  There  is 
that  which  gives  what  seem  severe  laws  beatitude 
qualities;  punishment  becomes  persuasion,  and 
penalties  revelations  of  God. 

Upward-yearning,  quivering  hearts,  beseeching 
hands  reaching  through  heaviest  shame  are  evi- 
dences of  a  Father's  love,  probing  the  wound  that 
it  may  be  healed.  Men  talk  with  impious  flippancy 
of  "outcasts,"  "lost  souls,"  and  "abandoned 
classes,"  but  there  is  that  which  does  not  abandon 
those  whom  we  forsake,  there  is  that  which  teaches 
him  whom  we  call  hopeless  to  love  the  good  name 
he  tramples  upon,  that  compels  him  to  honor  the 
virtue  he  soils.  In  the  lowest  nature  we  see  the 
redeeming  love  of  God  showing  itself  in  a  move- 
ment from  "what  is"  to  the  better  "what  may  be." 
Follow  the  bitter  experiences  of  life  and  they  melt 
into  joy  and  strength. 

"  Yet,  O  well  I  can  remember, 
Once  I  called  my  pastures.  Pain, 
And  their  waters  were  a  torrent 
Sweeping  through  my  life  amain; 
Now  I  call  them  Peace  and  Stillness, 
Brightness  of  all  Happy  Thought." 

So  beneath  all  noble  duties,  I  believe  that  the 
soul  that  wisely  reads  its  own  experiences  and 
earnestly  seeks  to  utilize  the  same,  will  find  a  God 
of  love  as  well  as  of  law,  a  Father  to  trust  because 


RelUjion  from  the  Near  End.  147 

there  is  humanity  to  hope  for.  The  travails  as  well 
as  the  triumphs  of  the  soul  studied  from  the  near 
end  lead  us  into  the  Infinite  arms.  These  taught 
the  broken  Tresham,  in  Browning's  "  Blot  in  the 
'Scutcheon  "  to  say, 

"  I  saw  througli 
The  troubled  surface  of  his  crime  and  yours 
A  depth  of  purity  immovable. 
Had  I  but  glanced,  where  all  seemed  turbidest 
Had  gleamed  some  inlet  to  the  calm  beneath." 

By  the  same  road  did  the  cinished  Mildred  reach 
the  revelations  which  enabled  her  to  say, 

"  I  dare  approach  that  Heaven 
Which  has  not  made  a  living  thing  despair, 
Which  needs  no  code  to  keep  its  grace  from  stain, 
But  bids  the  vilest  worm  that  turns  on  it 
Desist  and  be  forgiven." 

Once  more  I  remember  the  truth-loving  spii-it 
who  may  suspect  me  of  begging  the  question,  and 
will  say  to  me  with  the  Astronomer-poet  of  Persia: 

"  I  sent  my  Soul  through  the  Invisible, 
Some  letter  of  that  After-life  to  spell: 
And  by  and  by  my  Soul  returned  to  me. 
And  answered,  '  I  Myself  and  Heaven  and  Hell.' 

"Heav'n  but  the  Vision  of  fulfill'd  Desire, 
And  Hell  the  Shadow  of  a  Soul  on  fire. 
Cast  on  the  Darkness  into  which  Ourselves, 
So  late  emerg'd  from,  shall  so  soon  expire." 

To  such  I  answer,  "Very  well,  give  to  your 
short  creed  the  dignity  of  integrity,  be  as  honest 
as  old  Omar  Khayyam.     If  this  is  all  you  have,  you 


148  Religion  from  the  Near  End. 

have  still  left  the  love  in  your  own  heart.  In  you 
there  is  pity  if  there  be  none  in  all  the  universe 
elsewhere.  You  would  wipe  the  tears  from  penitent 
eyes,  and  you  cannot  be  alone  in  this  tenderness. 
It  is  in  the  hearts  of  all  men  and  women  every- 
where." Love  is  surely  the  highest  part  of  the 
human  soul.  Who  dares  say  that  humanity  is  the 
largest,  highest  thing  in  this  universe  ?  The  rose 
draws  its  fragrance  from  the  ground  and  receives 
its  color  from  the  sun.  Whence  comes  this  heav- 
enly flame  of  kindliness  to  human  cheeks  ? 

"  Draw,  if  thou  canst,  the  mystic  line 
Severing  rightly  liis  from  thine, 
Which  the  human,  which  divine?  " 

That  cannot  be  evolved  which  was  not  first  in- 
volved. I  know  not  how  to  sever  this  love  and 
duty  of  the  human  heart  from  the  soui'ce  from 
which  they  came.  The  fountain  cannot  rise  higher 
than  its  source.  There  are  strange  premoni- 
tions of  deeper  depths  still  to  be  fathomed,  kind- 
lier floods  of  sympathy  still  to  break  out  of  and 
upon  the  human  soul.  I  dare  not  claim  as  mine  the 
love  that  comes  without  my  bidding  and  goes  with- 
out my  directing;  that  which  blesses  and  is  blessed 
beyond  my  planning.  The  light  comes  not  from 
the  fixture  but  from  the  illuminating  fluid  that 
pours  through  it,  so  the  kindly  flame  that  burns  in 
the  human  eye  is  fed  out  of  some  retort,  exhaust- 
less  and  infinite.  This  is  the  everlastingr  love  to 
which  the  heart  reverently  ascribes  the  words  of 
the  universal  ritual  "Our  Father." 


Religion  from  the  Near  End.  149 

Let  me  not  overreach  my  logic.  Let  me  abide 
by  the  severe  limitations  of  my  illustratioii.  If 
there  be  no  light  for  us  without  the  fixture,  but  if 
we  have  found  the  redemptive  cross  in  the  human 
heart  itself,  we  have  still  found  that  which  is  the 
"desire  of  all  nations,"  "the  fulfilling  of  all  law," 
we  have  found  that  deathless  essence  through  which 
we  pray  and  through  which  all  oui'  aspirations 
tend. 

"To  Mercy,  Pity,  Peace  aud  Love, 
All  pray  in  their  distress, 
And  to  these  virtues  of  delight 
Return  their  thankfulness. 

"  For  Mercy,  Pity,  Peace  and  Love, 
•  Is  God  our  Father  dear; 

And  Mercy,  Pity,  Peace  and  Love 

Is  man,  his  child  and  care. 

*'  For  Mercy  has  a  human  heart. 
Pity,  a  human  face; 
And  Love  the  human  form  divine; 
And  Peace,  the  human  dress. 

"  Then  every  man  of  every  clime, 
That  prays  in  his  distress, 
Prays  to  the  human  form  divine, 
Love,  Mercy,  Pity,  Peace. 

"  And  all  must  love  the  human  form, 
In  heathen,  Turk  or  Jew  ; 
Where  Mercy,  Love  and  Pity  dwell 
There  God  is  dwelling  too." 

Where  Love,  Mercy,  Pity  and  Peace  are  there  at 
least  is  God.  If  these  are  centered  in  your  soul 
then  religion  forces  you  to  "  demean  yourself  in  a 


150  Religion  from  the  Near  End. 

God-like  fashion,   to    administer   ttiose  powers  as 
becomes  the  Divine,"  to  lend  this  love  to 

"  Leaven  earth  with  a  feel  of  heaven." 

Jesus  said  of  the  penitent  woman,  "  Her  sins  are 
forgiven,  for  she  loved  much.'"  The  loving  soul 
however  enmeshed  is  so  far  a  saved  and  a  saving 
soul.  The  sincerity  and  fervor  of  your  life  de- 
termine your  hold  upon  Divine  things,  your  re- 
lation to  the  eternal  right.  I  mean  no  mystical 
ecstasy  incompatible  with  rational  thought,  no 
vague  projection  of  your  affections  towards  any 
being  whose  existence  is  open  to  theological  discus- 
sion and  distrust,  I  mean  the  common  loves  of  the 
human  heart,  the  homely  duties  of  every-day  life, 
the  tears  that  stain  the  quivering  cheeks  of  earth. 
It  was  because  the  soul  of  that  woman  went  out  in 
great  waves  of  love  to  that  rustic  from  Galilee  who, 
without  the  training  of  the  schools,  or  the  pre- 
sumption of  the  priests,  could  speak  words  of  heal- 
ing wisdom,  in  whose  voice  were  floods  of  tender- 
ness, whose  eyes  were  beacon  lights  to  sin- tossed 
souls  because  they  beamed  with  kindliness,  that 
she  was  lifted  above  her  mistakes.  Not  by  a  mira- 
cle but  by  a  law  of  the  universe  were  her  blots  and 
stains,  whatever  they  were,  washed  away  by  these 
loving  tears,  and  her  soul  again  moved  in  accord 
with  the  forces  of  the  universe.  Better  a  dutiful 
Maa-dalene  blessing  the  world  with  her  love  than  a 
spotless  Pharisee  freezing  the  world  with  his  sel- 
fishness.    This    paradox  is    of    Jesus,    not    of  me. 


Religion  from  the  Near  End.  151 

Jesus  himself  has  been  the  saving  power  in  the 
world  and  his  cross  the  symbol  of  redeeming  love 
for  nineteen  centuries  because  his  divine  love  was 
human.  I  have  no  quarrel  with  the  Christian  cen- 
turies for  deifying  that  loving  heart  or  clothing 
with  God-like  dignity  that  kindly  brow,  I  only  dis- 
sent from  the  conditions  of  deification.  He  was 
divine  because  he  was  the  son  of  man,  born  out  of 
the  loins  of  Joseph  and  Mary.  It  may  yet  appear 
that  the  greatest  service  the  Catholic  chui-ch  has 
rendered  to  the  race  is  the  elevation  to  divine  hon- 
ors of  the  mother-heart  of  peasant  Mary. 

Yes,  if  you  can  find  God  nowhere  else,  find  him 
on  Calvary,  or  if  the  cross  lifts  the  Man  Jesus  out 
of  reach,  find  God  in  the  sobbing  heart  that  lies  at 
the  foot  of  the  cross;  and  if  she  be  too  far  away, 
find  him  in  the  mother's  love  that  cradled  you,  find 
him  in  the  encircling  arms  of  the  man  or  woman 
whose  protecting  love  you  cannot  doubt.  Wherever 
you  touch  love,  be  it  in  baby  smile,  or  lover's  kiss, 
wherever  you  touch  duty,  be  it  in  father's  protec- 
tion or  mother's  self-sacrifice,  or  yom'  own  effort  to 
be  a  Providence  to  the  improvident,  a  God  to  the 
Godless,  you  find  the  open  gate  that  leads  to  the 
Father's  heart. 


II. 

There  are  two  hostile  ways  of  looking  at  this 
tendency  to  seek  religion  from  the  near  end  of 
things.     One  way  is  that  of  a  patronizing  pity.    It 


152  Religion  from  the  Near  End, 

is  to  regard  it  as  a  brave  effort  to  make  the  best  of 
a  "faithless"  condition.  There  are  those  who 
think  "  this  is  better  than  nothing,"  and  to  those 
who  work  from  the  center  outward  they  say,  "If 
you  can't  say  God,  please  say  Good."  If  you 
have  not  faith  enough  to  sign  the  Apostle's 
creed,  to  accept  the  Bible  as  pre-eminent  au- 
thority, or  to  confess  Jesus  as  your  sole  and  peculiar 
master,  why,  then  get  some  religious  comfort  and 
inspiration  out  of  science,  modern  or  ancient  art, 
domestic  love  and  by  doing  your  duty.  If  you  can 
not  profess  the  Christian  name  or  declare  your  the- 
istic  convictions,  still  try  to  lead  the  Christian  life 
and  obey  the  divine  laws;  for  that  really  is  very 
good. 

Well,  if  the  attitude  must  be  an  apologetic 
one,  I  must  still  champion  this  position.  If  the 
words  of  every-day  life  and  of  universal  experience 
are  smaller  words  than  the  words  of  creeds  and  rit- 
ual, and  if  souls  from  imbecility  or  any  other  rea 
son  cannot  speak  the  words  you  deem  the  greater 
yet  do  love  to  speak  their  modest  equivalents — 
souls  that  cannot  start  from  your  far  end,  but  are 
diligent  in  their  search  for  the  sanctities  close  by, 
— I  much  prefer  to  work  with  and  for  these  than 
with  those  who  shut  them  out.  I  choose  to  stand 
alongside  of  the  neglected,  abused  and  unappreci- 
ated souls,  those  who,  like  the  Publican  in  the  para- 
ble, began  the  religious  life  by  humbly  confessing 
their  limitations.  Christendom  ofPers  ample  ac- 
commodations and  plenty  of  fellowship  for  those  who 


Religion  from  the  Near  End  153 

are  willing  to  start  from  the  farther  end  with  the 
assertions  that  end  in  dogmas.  I  prefer  to  stand 
with  what  some  may  call  the  doctrinal  imbeciles  of 
to-day,  the  non-exports  in  the  creed  business.  Here 
and  hereafter  I  am  willing  to  take  my  chances  with 
those  who  are  seeking  truth,  even  though  they  may 
miss  it;  those  who  believe  in  righteousness,  though 
they  may  notlmow  how  to  formulate  it;  those  who 
love  the  good,  even  though  they  dare  not  personify 
it.  My  church  is  for  the  un-churched,  and  my 
fellowship  is  for  those  to  whom  fellowship  is  de- 
nied. 

But  is  not  this  a  truthless  attitude  to  take  to- 
wards those  who  work  religion  from  the  near  end  ? 
Shall  we  not  rather  say  that  they  who  work  from 
the  near  end  lay  hold  of  the  big  end,  the  faith  end 
of  religion  ?  They  reach  for  that  without  which 
all  words  are  worthless.  The  spirituality  of  religion 
lies  in  the  appreciation  of  near  sanctity.  God, 
heaven,  hell,  immortality  and  revelation  are  in 
the  present  tense,  or  else  they  are  nowhere  and 
nothing.  He  who  does  not  believe  "  two  and  two 
make  four"  to  be  a  part  of  the  Infinite  truth  of 
God,  needs  a  creed  to  tell  him  that  there  is  a  God 
at  all.  He  who  is  not  conscious  of  first-hand  con- 
tact with  the  divine,  who  does  not  feel  the  spirit  of 
the  universe  pulsing  in  his  spirit,  who  does  not  find 
every  inch  of  space,  every  thought -throb,  every 
heart-beat,  every  love-longing  and  right-doing  im- 
pulse trembling  with  religious  power,  must  need 
the  formal  assurance  of  Conferences.     He  needs  to 


154  Religion  from  the  Near  End. 

legislate  into  use  the  words,  "  Christianity,"  "  The- 
ism," "God."  Bnt  he  who  does  feel  all  this  will 
be  glad  to  subordinate  all  words  to  the  verities 
words  should  stand  for,  because  he  believes  in  and 
loves  the  verity.  True  religion  has  but  little  to 
offer  mankind  if  it  is  not  eventually  to  teach  that 
the  highest,  not  the  lowest,  way  of  spelling  the  Di- 
vine name  is  with  a  double  "  O; "  if  it  is  not  going 
to  make  men  ashamed  to  serve  God  ia  a  way  that 
will  bruise  man,  to  attempt  to  honor  the  Father  by 
injuring  the  child. 

"  Yes,  write  it  in  the  rock,"  Saint  Bernard  said, 
"  Grave  it  on  brass  with  adamantine  pen! 
'Tis  God  himself  becomes  apparent,  when 
God's  wisdom  and  God's  goodness  are  display'd, 

For  God  of  these  his  attributes  is  made." — 
Well  spake  the  impetuous  Saint,  and  bore  of  men 
The  suffrage  captive ;  now,  not  one  in  ten 
Recalls  the  obscure  opposer  he  outweigh'd. 

God's  wisdom  and  God''s  goodness  ! — Ay,  but  fools 
Mis-define  these  till  God  knows  them  no  more. 
Wisdom  and  goodness,  they  are  Ood! — what  schools 

Have  yet  so  much  as  heard  this  simpler  lore? 
This  no  Saint  preaches,  and  this  no  Church  rules; 
'Tis  in  the  desert,  now  and  heretofore. 

The  rosary  of  the  ultimate  religion  is  not  yet 
formed,  but,  when  it  is,  we  may  be  sure  the  spring 
bud,  the  drop  of  water,  the  painter's  passion,  the 
musician's  ecstasy,  woman's  love,  baby's  smile,  the 
hand  that  holds  the  plow  or  swings  the  hammer, 
the  conscience  that  does  the  right,  will  be  beads  in 


Religion  from  the  Near  End.  155 

that  rosary,  and  each  bead  will  tell  a  prayer,  and 
every  prayer  will  fertilize  the  spiritual  life  of  men. 
Let  us  attend  now  to  another  form  of  the  objec- 
tions raised  against  this  position.  There  are  those 
that  will  admit  that  possibly  the  individual  may 
find  his  religious  nature  awakened  and  ripened  by 
living  from  the  near  end,  but  who  question  the 
possibility  of  an  organized,  social,  religious  life 
based  on  these  near  things.  They  tell  us  that 
when  we  come  to  organize,  we  must  use  some  of 
the  far-end  words.  "  Men  and  women,"  we  are 
told,  cannot  be  held  together,  or  at  least  they  can- 
not make  church  life  potent  and  coherent,  by  mak- 
ing the  nearer  end  the  greater  end,  the  seeming 
small  things  the  essentials.  The  universal  experi- 
ences of  sufPering  souls  cannot,  they  say,  be  made 
the  ground  of  an  inspired  and  inspiring  fellow- 
ship that  will  have  in  it  missionary  purposes  and 
efficiency.  These  objectors,  like  Peter  on  the 
Mount,  would  fain  build  tabernacles  for  the  figures 
that  float  in  the  air,  rather  than  for  those  that 
stand  upon  the  earth.  Thus  it  is  that  chui'ches 
have  been  organized  to  shield  the  doctrine  of  the 
Trinity,  to  shelter  the  authority  of  the  Bible,  to 
hold  the  dogmas  of  immersion  and  even  the  grim 
terror  of  eternal  punishment;  hoping  by  the  per- 
petuation of  those  remoter  words  to  serve  and  con- 
serve religion  in  the  world.  Churches  have  been 
founded  upon  a  revelation  that  belongs  to  the  past, 
and  a  bliss  that  is  to  come,  a  Lord  that  spoke  eight- 
een hundred   years  ago,  and  a  joy  that  awaits  on 


156  Religion  from  the  Near  End. 

the  other  side  of  death's  gate.  Their  calendar  of 
saints  is  made  up  of  dead  folks,  and,  if  we  are  to 
believe  the  hymn  book,  their  hearts  are  ever  yearn- 
ing for  mansions  beyond  the  skies.  All  this  is  an 
attempt  to  organize  religion  from  the  farther  end. 
It  has  resulted  in  churches  separated  by  a  wide 
chasm  from  many  of  the  needs  and  realities  of  the 
life  that  now  is,  churches  removed  from  much  of 
the  holy  living  and  the  holy  yearnings  of  to-day- 
Many  of  the  healthiest  impulses  and  the  noblest 
thoughts  of  current  life  are  compelled  by  these  to 
go  unchurched.  They  have  no  place  in  the  costly 
piles  that  are  to  be  seen  on  our  street  corners, 

"  With  spire  and  sad  slate  roof,  aloof 
From  human  fellowship  so  far; " — 

piles  that  cast  their  chilly  shadows  athwart  so- 
ciety for  six  days  in  the  week,  with  doors  locked 
against  hungry  hearts  and  vacant  minds;  churches 
so  elegant  that  they  must  not  be  soiled  by  the 
grimy  feet  of  earth's  plodders,  however  necessary 
the  church  may  be,  even  to  get  the  grime  ofP  the 
feet*  ;  only  he  who  can  pronounce  the  shibboleth,  or 
properly  accent  the  doctrine,  has  a  right  to  a  seat 
of  honor  in  them.  The  good  missionary  must  not 
go  back  to  speak  comforting  words  to  the  hungiy 
heathen,  if  he  have  a  little  hope  that  a  chance  may 
yet  be  given  to  the  grandfather  of  his  convert.   The 


*Miss  Frances  Willard  says  that  the  work  of  the  W.  C. 
T.  U.  is  not  unfrequently  interfered  with  by  ladies'  objec- 
tions that  Temperance  meetings  spoil  the  carpets  in  church 
vestries  and  parlors. 


Religion  from  the  Near  End.  157 

church  must  bo  tested  by  its  word  and  life,  uot  by 
its  life  with  or  without  its  word.  All  this  is  or- 
ganizing religion  from  its  farther  end, — from  the 
life  that  is  not  yet  interpreted,  in  the  interest's  of 
a  world  into  which  wo  are  not  yet  ushered,  upon 
doctrines  which  many  dear  and  useful  people  can 
not  accept,  upon  creeds  which  another  ago  has 
written,  revelations  vouchsafed  to  other  souls. 

I  do  not  deny  the  possibility  of  finding  religion 
from  the  farther  end,  nor  that  utility  and  blessed- 
ness may  and  does  come  from  the  same.  Far  bo  it 
from  me  to  read  small  the  great  words  or  to  try  to 
empty  high  phrases  of  their  hopes  and  fur-reaching 
yearnings.  Full  well  I  know  how  the  heart  of  man 
has  been  sustained  and  ordered  in  the  home  of 
mystery,  but  I  do  insist  that  there  is  now  greater 
need  of,  and  larger  returns  in  store  for,  those  who 
undertake  to  organize  religion  from  the  nearer  end 
of  life. 

Let  us  see  what  can  be  done  by  beginning  with 
things  close  by.  Let  us  admit,  as  I  think  we  ought, 
that  thirty  out  of  any  thii'ty-nine  articles  that  are 
offered  by  the  churches  as  the  substance  of  doctrine 
are  beyond  our  comprehension  and  elude  our  proofs. 
We  may  not  know  about  Apostolic  Successions,  or 
even  about  Theistic  assertions,  or  Christian  pre-emi- 
nence ;  but  we  do  have  great  interest  in  the  story  of 
the  good  Samaritan ;  and  the  Golden  Rule  takes  hold 
upon  us.  The  Beatitudes  awe  us  and  make  us 
ashamed  of  ourselves.  The  allusion  to  a  "  cup  of 
cold  water  "  appeals  to  us.     Pity  for  the  hungry. 


158  Religion  from  the  Near  End. 

compassion  for  the  outcast  and  sympathy  for  the 
desolate, — these  things  we  do  understand.  We 
know  that  there  are  homesick  boys  and  tempted 
girls  in  our  cities;  wayward  young  men  and  flip- 
pant young  women;  husbands  that  are  hard  to 
their  wives,  and  wives  that  are  selfish  in  their 
homes ;  children  neglected  though  draped  in  silks. 
Now  can  we  not  organize  for  the  help  of 
these?  Can  we  not  unite  men  and  women  to- 
gether as  compactly  upon  a  purjyose  to  help  human- 
ity, to  say  the  least,  as  upon  a  conclusion  about 
God?  Can  we  not  find  a  bond  of  union  in 
needs  as  strong  as  in  creeds  f  Is  there  not  a 
beauty  of  fellowship  in  diversity  as  in  uni- 
formity, and  more  helpful  ?  Religion  organized 
from  the  near  end  of  life  will  undertake  to  serve 
the  life  that  now  is.  It  will  go  in  quest  of  truth, 
it  will  be  a  pledge  of  righteousness,  it  will  stand 
for  present  sanctities.  Organize  religion  from  this 
end  and  you  will  have  a  church  of  the  Holy  En- 
deavor, a  church  of  the  Sacred  Certainties,  a  school 
of  the  Spirit,  a  primary  department  of  the  Celes- 
tial University.  I  admit  that  this  church  is  still  an 
unsolved  problem,  because  it  has  as  yet  scarceh- 
been  tried.  But  I  do  profoundly  believe  that  when 
religion  begins  systematically  to  organize  itself 
upon  the  near  verities  and  the  present  needs  of 
the  human  life  that  now  is,  then  will  come  the 
true  Catholic  church,  that  in  the  breadth  of  its 
territory,  the  number  of  its  communicants,  and  the 
majesty  of  its  history,  may  yet  out-rival  the  church 
of  Rome. 


Religion  from  the  Near  End.  159 

I  believe  this  because  suck  u  church  will  be 
planted  upou  the  most  universal  elements  in  human 
nature,  the  head-hunger  and  heart-hunger  of  hu- 
manity. Few  have  possessions,  all  have  needs. 
The  Pharisee's  prayer, — "  God,  I  thank  Thee  that 
I  am  not  as  the  rest  of  men,  I  fast  twice  a  week,  I 
give  tithes  of  all  that  I  get,"  necessarily  belongs  to 
the  liturgy  of  the  few.  God  grant  that  they  may 
still  become  fewer.  But  the  Piiblican's  prayer, — 
"  God  be  merciful  unto  me  a  sinner," — is  the 
prayer  "universal.  It  belongs  to  the  ritual  of  hu- 
manity. God  grant  that  its  soft  murmurs  may  yet 
be  heard  the  round  world  over. 

I  believe  this  because  of  the  great  niimber  who 
already  in  spirit  belong  to  this  chui'ch.  Perhaps 
the  largest, — and  one  is  tempted  to  say, — the 
noblest  ch\irch  in  Christendom  to-day  is  the  un- 
churched. It  certainly  contains,  freely  speaking, 
the  highest  and  the  lowest  in  most  communities. 
The  best  and  the  wickedest  are  to-day  found  out- 
side the  pale  of  the  conventional  churches.  The 
man  who  does  his  own  thinking,  who  is  his  own 
missionary,  administers  his  own  charities,  is  seldom 
the  man  who  is  very  far  inside  the  letter  of  the 
church,  nor  very  far  outside  the  spirit  of  the  church. 
When  such  a  man  finds  his  neighbor  in  the  spirit, 
and  these  two  find  the  third,  and  the  third  finds 
the  fourth,  the  church  of  the  Beatitudes  is  begun, 
and  it  will  continue  to  increase  until  it  includes  all 
those  who  have  to  give  and  those  who  have  needs. 
Of  coiirse  the  church  organized  in  the  interests  of 


160  Religion  from  the  Near  End. 

religion  from  the  near  end  must  have  its  own 
methods.  Its  members  will  not  be  tied  together, 
like  a  bundle  of  tacks,  with  a  creed  string  however 
fine  or  strong;  but  they  will  be  drawn  together 
like  the  iron  filings  that  cling  to  the  magnet  that 
is  drawn  through  them,  yielding  to  the  beautiful 
law  of  polarity,  held  there  by  divine  attractions, 
the  spiritual  affinities  of  soul.  This  law  is  as  per- 
sistent and  as  safe  as  'the  chemical  activity  that 
locks  the  atoms  in  each  other's  embrace.  In  the 
east,  the  true  shepherd  country,  the  shepherd 
always  goes  before,  the  sheep  following.  He  ever 
leads,  he  never  drives  the  flock.  It  is  left  for  the 
clumsy  and  hasty  men  of  the  west  to  invent  the 
harsh  and  tiresome  methods  of  driving  the  herd; 
so  the  true  spiritual  shepherd  that  would  fold  souls 
by  organizing  religion  from  the  near  end  will  ever 
lead  and  never  drive. 

I  believe  in  this  possibility  because  of  the  great 
amount  of  work  already  being  done  on  these 
lines.  Why  this  modern  complexity  of  humanita- 
rian reform  and  fraternal  organizations?  What  is 
the  meaning  of  the  kitchen-garten  and  kindergarten 
associations,  temperance  societies,  white  and  red 
cross  leagues,  prison  congresses,  women's  clubs, 
men's  lodges,  etc.,  with  their  wearisome  waste  of 
human  tissue  in  the  way  of  presidents,  secretaries, 
by-laws  and  assessments  ?  We  all  know  that  from 
fifty  to  seventy  per  cent,  of  the  strength  of  such 
organizations  is  necessarily  used  in  overcoming  the 
friction  of  the  machine,  leaving  but  the  thirty  per 


Religion  from  the  Near  End.  161 

cent,  of  energy  to  do  the  work  for  which  the  ma- 
chine is  created.  But  even  at  such  a  cost  they 
are  indispensable  at  present;  because  they  dare 
undertake  the  work  for  which  the  churches  should 
exist,  but  which  the  churches  of  the  land  fail 
to  take  up  because  they  are  not  organized  from 
the  near  end.  Witness  the  clumsy  waste  by  the 
churches  of  America.  Millions  of  money  are  in- 
vested in  the  buildings  that  dot  otu-  city,  town  and 
cross-roads ;  buildings  dedicated  to  religion,  but 
sealed  to  seventy-five  per  cent,  of  the  real  work 
which  religion  ought  to  do.  It  is  this  that  neces- 
sitates this  tiresome  set  of  instramentalities 
in  order  to  do  the  work  which  the  churches 
ought  to  do.  More  radical  and  perplexing 
than  the  problems  of  labor  and  capital  are  the 
problems  of  how  to  get  the  churches  of  the  land  to 
meet  the  religious  needs  of  the  land;  how  to  in- 
duce them  to  do  the  work  which  alone  justifies 
churches,  namely,  the  enlarging  of  the  life  of  man 
and  adjusting  it  to  its  place  in  the  universe.  Men, 
hard  pressed  through  the  week  with  the  drudgery 
of  business  and  the  intense  routine  of  material 
concerns,  need  the  intellectual  variety,  the  social 
lift,  the  moral  elevation  and  spiritual  refinement, 
which  active,  persistent,  continuous  co-operation 
with  a  church,  working  from  the  near  end,  would 
bring.  In  such  co-operation  they  will  find  larger 
returns  for  the  time  and  money  invested,  than  is 
possible  for  them  to  find  in  their  masculine  clubs, 
lodges  and  labor  unions. 


162  Religion  from  the  Near  End, 

One  of  the  most  alarming,  as  well  as  most  hope- 
ful, signs  of  the  times,  is  this  growing  eagerness 
of  women  to  multiply  feminine  organizations  for 
especial  objects  of  reform  and  culture.  I  do  not 
believe  that  these  women's  clubs,  with  their  social 
jealousies  and  easy  honors,  can  do  as  much  for 
their  members,  intellectually  or  spiritually,  as  the 
same  amount  of  capital  in  time  and  money  in- 
vested in  a  church  working  from  the  near  end, 
where  men  and  women  combine  for  the  enlarg- 
ing of  the  boundaries  of  life  in  every  direction.  ^ 
This  tendency  is  alarming  because  it  threatens 
to  withhold  from  the  church  the  brain  power 
of  women,  and  leave  it  continuously  the  victim 
of  woman's  sweet  heart-and-hand  life,  which,  how- 
ever sincere,  will  miss  the  larger  blessing  un- 
less there  go  with  it  the  woman's  head  life  also. 
One  of  the  sad  spectacles  of  the  day  is  to  find 
women  in  the  club,  complacently  denying  or 
counteracting  the  doctrines  cf  the  church  to  which 
they  lend  their  Sunday  presence,  from  which  they 
draw,  or  think  they  draw,  their  religious  life.  On 
week  day  in  their  "  study  classes "  they  will 
grapple  with  the  masters  of  thought,  the  problems 
of  reform,  and  they  call  this  "club  work."  On 
Sunday  they  try  to  persuade  their  husbands  to  en- 
dure preaching  that  the  husbands  do  not  believe 
in  and  that  the  wives  cannot  justify.  They  will 
sell  tickets  for  parish  entertainments,  that  have  in 
them  but  little  dignity  of  intellect  and  still  less 
sincerity  of  spirit.     They  will  knit  fancy  work  for 


Religion  from  the  Near  End.  163 

the  "  fair,"  and  serve  as  shop  girls  at  the  "  l>azaar," 
and  this  they  call  "  church  work."  May  God  for- 
give them  for  the  confusion.  That  other  was 
"  church  work," — this  is  too  cheap  to  be  called 
"club  work"  even.  This  woman's  activity  is 
a  hopeful  sign  of  the  times,  because  it  shows 
woman  rising  into  the  full  stature  of  womanhood, 
the  stature  of  a  woman  with  a  head  as  well  as  a 
heart,  who  has  thoughts  as  well  as  feelings,  of  a 
woman  who  dares  to  think,  and  in  her  thinking 
finds  her  spirituality  growing,  her  tenderness  and 
helpfulness  increasing.  It  is  a  hojieful  sign,  be- 
cause one  of  these  days  woman  will  acquire  that 
self-reliance,  that  honesty  and  sincerity  of  the 
intellectual  life,  that  will  enable  her  to  convert  her 
husband,  make  her  wise  enough  to  find  ways  of 
carrying  into  the  church  that  which  belongs  more. 
in  the  church  than  anywhere  else,— her  deepest 
thoughts  and  most  dignified  purposes.  Nothing 
will  save  woman's  mind  from  being  "  womanish  " 
except  free  and  frequent  contact  with  manly  intel- 
lects and  hearts,  on  the  highest  sides  of  life ;  and 
nothing  will  saVe  men's  hearts  from  becoming 
"  mannish  "  (and  mannishuess  must  be  counted 
something  quite  as  uncomplimentary,  to  say 
the  least,  as  womanishness)  except  contact  with 
womanly  grace  and  refinement  in  the  interest  of  the 
perennial  things.  I  recognize  the  value  of  these 
lodges,  unions  and  clubs,  within  certain  limits;  but 
I  am  saddened  when  I  think  of  men  who  necessarily 
spend   eight  or  ten  hours  a   day  in  close  contact 


164  Religion  from  the  Near  End. 

with  men  none  too  pure  of  speech  or  of  breath, 
and  then  continue  to  give  many  of  their  evening 
hours  and  much  of  their  spare  energy  to  exclu- 
sively masculine  association;  to  the  neglect  of 
those  renewals  which  only  come  in  mixed  company, 
where  not  only  men  and  women,  but  old  and 
young,  mingle  their  common  life  for  the  enlarge- 
ment and  enjoyment  of  all.  Now  this  estrange- 
ment and  unnatui-al  divorce  is  inevitable  in  the  at- 
mosphere of  churches  that  seek  to  serve  religion 
from  the  far  end  of  things.  These  say  to  growing 
women,  "  You  must  not  think  too  much  on  these 
things,"  and  to  independent  men,  "You  must  be- 
lieve, even  though  you  do  not  understand."  But 
the  church  that  is  a  holy  quest  for  the  deed,  rather 
than  an  iron  pledge  for  the  word,  will  change  all 
this.  It  will  make  again  the  church  building  the 
center  of  the  neighborhood  life.  However  humble 
in  its  exterior,  it  will  again  be  the  cathedral,  the 
one  house  with  an  open  door  to  all  conditions  of 
men,  all  the  week  around.  Not  a  seventh -day  but 
a  seven  day  movement  is  what  is  needed  in  our 
churches.  This  coming  church  will  remember  that 
wherever  there  is  a  search  for  the  thoughts  o^  Job, 
Dante,  Goethe,  Browning  or  Emerson,  wherever 
there  is  an  attempt  to  soften  the  hard  life  of 
the  poor,  to  elevate  the  ignorant,  to  train  the 
awkward  fingers  of  little  children,  or  to  put  beauty 
into  dreary  homes,  there  is  the  legitimate 
work  of  the  church.  For  such  work  trustees 
will  neither  begrudge  gas  nor  coal.     Women  will 


Religion  from  the  Near  End.  165 

not  shield  their  carpets,   and  parishes  will  say  to 
their  ministers,  "  See  to  it  that  you  develop  to  the 
maximum  the  intellectual,  moral  and  spiritual  re- 
sources of  your  people,  however  it  may  be  with 
your  sermons."     Then  the  church  will  stand  once 
more  for  living   faith,  for  high  thought,  for  real 
conviction.     It  will  be  the  rallying  point  of  the 
community  of  which  it  is  the  center.     It  will  be 
the  joyous  home  of  thought,  art  and  fraternity; 
and  because  of  all  this  it  will  be  the  better  home 
for  worship ;  prayer  will  bo  more  tender  in  it,  psalm- 
ody more  lofty.     Then  religion  will  clothe   itself 
again  with  the  pomp  of  ritual  and  the  power  of 
symbolism.     It  will  inspire  painter,  sculptor,  archi- 
tect and  musician  to  make  their  contributions  to 
the  church  that  represents  the  untrammeled  gospel 
of  truth,  righteousness,  love  and  the  aspirations 
connected  therewith.     This    church    that    makes 
character  pre-eminent  will   ever  bud  and  blossom 
into  Deity's  name.     And  these  blossoms  will  be 
impelled  by  an  irresistible  force  to  ripen  into  the 
fruit  that  is  both  the  thought  and  the  love  of  God. 
I  am  not  dealing  in  impractical  rhapsodies.     Let 
the  churches  of  our  city  but  dedicate  the  humblest 
nook  in  their  buildings  as  a  shelter  corner  ever 
open  and  lighted,   warm   in  winter  and  cool    in 
summer,   with  the  refreshments  of  books,   papers 
and  innocent  games,    accessible  to   whoever  may 
come, — and  they  will  wage  a  winning  warfare  with 
the  sins  of  the  baneful  saloons.     And  until  they  do 
thus  array  themselves,    they   are  in  actual  league 


166  Religion  frvtn  the  Near  End. 

with  the  dram  shop  and  its  kindred  degradations. 
The  traffickers  in  rum  can  afford  to  pay  a  generous 
stipend  to  the  minister  for  every  night  he  keeps  his 
shop  closed,  because  the  guests  he  turns  away  will 
find  hearty  welcome  at  the  door  of  that  dram  shop, 
which  under  existing  circumstances  is  only  half 
devil's-door-way.  The  hearty  welcome,  the  human 
fellowship,  the  opportunity  of  man  to  meet  man  in 
the  companionship  that  lessens  the  solitude  of  life, 
— so  much  of  this  as  is  free  from  greed  and  coarse- 
ness, is  God's  own  work,  though  it  be  found  in  a 
beer  saloon.  Oh,  what  might  the  churches  of 
America  not  do,  if  they  committed  themselves 
primarily  to  the  gospel  of  the  Golden  Rule,  if  they 
dedicated  themselves  to  the  high  piety  of  character 
instead  of  devoting  so  much  time  to  the  pinchbeck 
sanctities  of  exclusiveness,  sectarian  rivalry,  de- 
nominational ambitions,  and  word- exacting,  rather 
than  life-demanding,  standards. 

See  what  is  already  accomplished  in  this  direc- 
tion, where  churches  unanimously  lead.  The  Chau- 
tauqua study  classes,  superficial  in  their  methods, 
perhaps  faulty  in  their  systems,  still  do  more  to- 
wards whetting  the  appetites  of  men  and  women  for 
the  better  things  in  literature  and  art,  and  in  ele- 
vating the  public  tastes  of  our  communities,  than 
any  college  in  the  land.  They  are  enabled  to  do 
this  work  because  in  some  clumsy  fashion  they 
have  gone  into  partnership  with  the  churches  of 
our  country.  Plenty  of  fanaticism  and  zeal  un- 
guided  by  knowledge  in  the  Y.  M.  C.  A,  movement 


Relvjion  from  the  Near  End.  167 

of  Christendom,  yet  in  most  communities  their 
rooms  represent  the  center  of  the  humanities,  and 
their  work  for  and  with  the  }'Oung  men  and  women 
(if  America  is  immeasurable.  Spite  of  similar  limi- 
tations, the  greatest  temperance  force  in  this  coun- 
try to-day,  I  think,  is  that  represented  by  the 
Women's  Christian  Temperance  Union. 

The  power  of  both  of  these  movements  is  found 
in  the  fact  that  they  are  in  league  with  orgajiized 
religion.  They  avail  themselves  of  the  machinery 
of  the  churches.  These  attempts,  however  clumsy, 
to  begin  at  the  near  end  to  lift  the  world  into  man- 
liness succeed  so  well  that,  many  fears  notwith- 
standing, they  are  manifestly  moving  the  world 
towards  Godliness  also.  If  our  churches  did  but 
offer  a  drink  of  ice- water  to  every  sun- parched  boy 
and  tired  laborer  that  passes  by  their  door  through 
the  summer  months,  they  would  so  deepen  their 
piety,  enlarge  their  spirituality,  that  they  would 
forget  all  about  the  Andover  controversy,  creed  quar 
rels  and  sect  disputes,  that  now  so  dissipate  ener- 
gies that  ought  to  be  directed  to  diviner  ends. 
"  Whosoever  shall  give  one  of  these  little  ones  a 
cup  of  cold  water  only  in  the  name  of  a  disciple, 
verily,  I  say  unto  you,  he  shall  in  no  wise  lose  his 
reward." 

There  is  no  real  missionary  work  except  home 
missionary  work.  The  potency  of  spirit  ever  ra- 
diates from  the  possessor  of  spirit.  That  is  a  true 
missionary  center  where  the  time  missionary  is. 
The  best  location  for  a  church  is  where  the  live  man 


168  Religion  from  the  Near  End. 

is.  "Where  MacGregor  sits  is  the  head  of  the 
table."  Potency  is  not  in  dollars,  not  in  plans  or 
schemes  of  organizations,  or  wordy  "bases  of 
union,"  but  always  in  the  living  voice,  the  throb- 
bing heart,  the  thinking  brain  and  the  helping 
hand.  The  Holy  Spirit  cannot  be  communicated 
through  "Boards"  and  "Committees,"  any  more 
than  it  can  through  the  finger-tips  of  surpliced 
Bishops.  But  wherever  a  mother  is  comforted, 
wherever  a  wavering  father  is  stayed,  wherever  a 
hungry  soul  is  fed  with  the  bread  of  life,  wherever 
hand  clasps  hand  for  a  long  pull,  a  hard  pull  and  a 
pull  all  together  for  the  purpose  of  making  the  bad 
a  little  less  bad,  and  the  good  a  little  better,  there  is 
the  foundation  of  a  church  that  will  stand.  The  story 
goes  that  one  day  the  holy  Buddha  fainted  from 
weariness  by  the  wayside  and  a  shepherd  lad  stuck 
a  branch  of  the  Lota  tree  into  the  ground  to  shelter 
his  face  from  the  scorching  sun.  The  branch  took 
root  and  became  a  great  tree;  and  although  the 
prophet  has  been  dead  twenty-three  hundred  years 
that  tree  is  still  green  and  growing.  So  this  church 
founded  on  these  lowly  ethical  ends  will  broaden, 
deepen,  heighten  in  lines  that  end  only  where  God 
ends.  Let  it  begin  now  and  it  will  last  as  long  as 
time  lasts. 

I  know  not  by  what  name  this  church  will  be 
known  in  the  future.  I  do  not  very  much  care.  I 
am  more  concerned  that  it  should  stand  for  religion 
than  for  any  name  under  religion.  I  prefer  to 
labor  for  the  thing  than  to  dispute  about  labels.    If 


Religion  from  the  Near  End.  169 

contention  arise  I  will  not  even  insist  upon  my 
ritrht  to  wear  my  own  favorite  tag.  I  delight  in  the 
triumphs  of  the  Christian  centuries  and  love  the 
Christian  name,  but  I  am  not  blind  to  the  danger 
still  imminent,  which  Lossing  foresaw.  We  must 
resent  the  clamor  for  a  name  to  the  confusion  of 
the  thing. 

"  Christianity,  not  manhood,  is  their  pride. 
E'en  that  which  from  their  founder  down  has  spiced 
Their  superstition  with  humanity, 
'Tis  not  for  its  humanity  they  love  it. 
No ;  but  because  Christ  taught,  Christ  practiced  it. 
Happy  for  them  he  wiis  so  good  a  man! 
Happy  for  them  that  they  can  trust  his  virtue! 
His  virtue?    Not  his  virtue,  but  his  name. 
They  say,  shall  spread  abroad  and  shall  devour 
And  put  to  shame  the  names  of  all  good  men. 
The  name,  the  name  is  all  their  pride. 

The  word  "Unitarian  "  sanctified  by  the  thought 
of  Channing,  intensified  by  the  heart  of  Theodore 
Parker,    humanized   by   the    great    philanthropic 
movement   of    this    century,    conspicuously    that 
which  wrought  for  the  freedom  of  men,  spiritual- 
ized by  the  lofty  teachings  and  serene   faith   of 
Emerson,  and  holding,  as  it  does,  in  its  very  com- 
position the  root  word  of  modern  thought  and  uni 
versal  religion,  Ukity,  may,  if  its  friends  are  equal 
to  their  opportvinity,  become  a  word  that  will  cover 
much  of  the  great  religious  movement  that  begins 
at   the   near  end  of  things.     I  believe  its  friends 
have  a  right  to  so  interpret   it;  that,    as   a  mat- 
ter of  fact,    it   does    represent    the  beginning  of 


170  Religion  from   .''he  Near  End. 

Biich  a  movement  to-day.  But  if  the  Unitarian 
chru'ch  is  to  cry  "  halt,"  and  if  the  majority  of  those 
who  wear  the  name  should  insist  upon  driving  a 
creed- peg  somewhere  or  on  wearing  it  as  a  badge 
of  doctrine,  then  so  much  the  worse  for  the  word, 
so  much  the  more  the  need  of  such  a  movement  as 
I  have  tried  to  sketch.  So  much  the  harder  shall 
we  have  to  work  for  a  church  larger  and  broader 
than  any  one  word  has  ever  yet  stood  for  in  his- 
tory. 

No,  not  the  Name,  but  the  Thing!  If  we  start  from 
the  near  end,  be  true  to  i^  holy  beginnings,  work 
outward  and  upward  on  all  the  lines  of  thought, 
feeling,  knowledge,  aye,  of  shame,  ignorance  and 
defeat,  we  shall  find  that  all  the  paths  lead  to  the 
Mount  of  Transfiguration  where  the  raiment  of  the 
mortal  becomes  white  with  immortal  light,  and  the 
face  of  man  shines  with  the  radiance  of  God. 
Then  without  Peter's  limitations,  wherever  it  may 
be,  the  soul  will  be  enabled  to  exclaim,  ^^Lord,  it  is 
good  for  us  to  be  here!" 


